UK “sleep walking” towards end of domestic reprocessing

The is the warning from Liverpool reprocessors Centriforce, which turns plastic collected from households into usable products such as cable covering and forest walk ways. The company wants to expand its extruded plastics operation, but has had trouble getting hold of enough waste plastic because it says companies in the Far East are paying “over the odds” for the material.

Centriforce's “Stokbord” product, made from recycled polyethylene, has global demand for applications like park benches and bridge walkways

Exports of plastic packaging waste increased by over 30% in the first half of 2005, compared to the same period in 2004 (see letsrecycle.com report). But Centriforce believes that to support local industry and jobs, local authorities and businesses in the UK should be looking to keep waste in the UK rather than going abroad for better prices.

Barry Keeling, sales manager at Centriforce, told letsrecycle.com: “We need to raise awareness of the UK industry, there is the potential to recycle materials in this country, there is no need to send as much of it abroad as we do. Unless we realise the potential of UK recycling we are sleep walking our way to no industry.

“Centriforce takes waste, reprocesses it into a product and then exports the product, this is a much healthier way of working than exporting waste only for it to come back to the UK later in its reprocessed form,” he said.

Potential
Mr Keeling believes his company has the potential to expand by around four or five times the size over the next five years – if the materials were available for it to do so. However, the continuing high demand for plastics from countries like China keeps the economic incentive on exporting material.

He said: “We are not going to stop exporting – it is always going to be there – but we should be working to even it out somewhat, so there is at least as much reprocessed in the UK as there is sent abroad.”

However, there is some hope for the home market according to Mr Keeling, as many local authorities are drawn to the idea of local reprocessing. He believes that the positives of recycling in the UK need to be pushed in order to increase local sales, rather than reiterating the negatives of export.