The Sky Atlantic television programme, Dirty Business, has prompted the British Plastics Federation and Chase Plastics to reiterate their messages that there needs to be measures within the UK Packaging Waste Recovery Note (PRN) system to encourage more reprocessing within the UK.
Roger Baynham, chairman of the BPF’s Recycling Group commented on “Sky’s recent investigation into recycled content that has been shipped to China.”
The programme was aired on Sky Atlantic on Wednesday and will be shown again on Sky News this evening (26 January) at 9.00pm.
He said: “Sky’s recent programme about quantities of plastic waste that have been sent to China for recycling and then ending up in landfill, reinforces many of the views that the Recycling Group has expressed for a number of years: the UK has been over-reliant on exporting materials for recycling. We hope that increased recognition of this issue will accelerate change so that more end-of-life plastic is reprocessed within the UK, positively contributing to our economy.”
UK reprocessing
Mr Baynham continued: “We have previously proposed changes to the current PRN system, aiming to increase reprocessing within the UK, including split plastic packaging recycling targets to ensure that more evidence would have to come from local recyclers rather than exporters.”
Roger Baynham said he hopes increased recognition of this issue will accelerate change
The programme also highlighted that finding an outlet for contaminated material is challenging, the recycling group chairman noted.
He explained that “The BPF Recycling Group has also been calling for a focus on driving up the quality of material — rather than a focus on increasing quantity — to help ensure there are markets for collected material. To achieve this, we have already proposed the creation of standards for feedstock material, providing an advantage to businesses that are working to reduce contamination.”
And, in terms of using more recycled content, he explained that even more could be achieved by incentivising companies to incorporate recycled content. “A mechanism for this is allowing companies to offset their producer responsibility obligations if they incorporate recycled content and design their products for recycling.”
Chase Plastics
Chase Plastics is a UK-based plastic reprocessor based in the UK. It says it has campaigned for a change to the PRN system for over 15 years as they believe it damages the UK sector.
Commenting on the documentary, Jessica Baker from the company said: “It is about time that the dark side of the PRN system was exposed, it has sponsored the low quality export of UK plastics waste at the expense of the UK’s own reprocessing sector for far too long.”
Mrs Baker continued: “A grown up debate is urgently needed about what should actually go into the recycling bin, we can’t simply ‘pretend’ to recycle everything, when in reality the unrecyclable element is being landfilled/burnt or ends up in rivers and oceans overseas. That non recyclable ‘element’ has been earning export PRNs for far too long. Let’s carefully collect what can be recycled, and do it properly and preferably within our own shores and with our own infrastructure.”
The post Plastics documentary prompts PRN changes call appeared first on letsrecycle.com.
Source: letsrecycle.com Plastic
