According to WRAP, urgent cross-sector action is required to develop a recycling system for soft flexible plastic packaging, like plastic bags and wrapping.
The call to action comes as the sustainability not-for-profit, which leads The UK Plastics Pact, publishes a roadmap to galvanise action across the plastics supply chain: ‘Creating a Circular Economy for Flexible Plastic Packaging’.
UK Plastics Pact members, who account for around 85 per cent of plastic packaging on UK supermarket shelves, are working towards all plastic packaging being reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, and increasing the amount that gets recycled to 70 per cent.
But while flexible plastic constitutes a quarter of all UK consumer plastic packaging by weight, only 4 per cent is currently recycled. Few local authorities collect flexible plastic, which is sometimes made from lots of different types of plastic and is therefore difficult to recycle.
The new roadmap sets out five key areas where efforts should be focussed in order to develop a circular economy for flexible plastics:
- Simplifying the design of packaging so it is easier to recycle
- Over the next few years, capitalising on the front of store collection points already provided by many supermarkets
- In the long term, implementing collection directly from people’s houses across all local authority areas
- Investing in sorting and reprocessing capacity and capabilities
- Ensuring recycled flexible plastic packaging has strong and stable end markets.
Peter Maddox, Director of WRAP UK, said: “Our starting point will always be to identify where our members can remove unnecessary plastic packaging. But where flexible plastic packaging serves an important purpose, such as preserving food or for hygiene reasons, it is imperative that we have the means to recycle it.”
“This will require significant investment and innovation across the entire supply chain. It’s a tall order and we’re at the start of a challenging journey, but our members are fully behind the ambition we have set out in the roadmap, and together we are tackling it head on.”
Mike Maxwell, Operations Director at Jayplas, said: “Increasing UK infrastructure for the recycling of flexible plastics makes absolute sense for the environment and the economy. Through investing in new capacity we are preventing thousands of tonnes of plastics from being shipped abroad, which keeps that material in the UK economy and creates local jobs. There is still a lot more to be done to create a circular economy for flexible plastic packaging, but we are committed to leading the way and will continue to invest in this crucial area.”