London Remade’s “Recycling Mixed Plastics” seminar was held at the Wellcome Collection building in Euston on Monday 29 September. I went along to listen and learn. It was good to see so many friendly faces in a very well attended event - there was standing room only at the back of the auditorium, emphasising how timely and interesting this subject is.

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Judging from the name badges bobbing around in the networking session, the majority of the attendees were from local authorities and waste management companies - the collectors and processors of mixed plastic waste - and only a small number of end-market manufacturers like Pli. I expect these proportions will change as knowledge of the opportunities to be found in recycled plastic utilization travels downstream.

Here’s a write-up from my brief notes, representing a small amount of the knowledge I could soak in…

We learned about the apocalyptic-sounding European Commission “End of Waste” initiative, that provides the framework for EU-wide waste strategy and enables the UK Environment Agency to “shift regulatory intervention further up the waste hierarchy.” That means mixed plastics are not going to remain somebody else’s problem for long.

We heard encouraging case studies from Veolia (a French owned company), Nextek (an Australian owned company) and Closed Loop Recycling (another Australian owned company) who are applying new technology and business sense to the business of plastics recycling, mainly showing successes in food-contact recycled PET from bottles.

The often-repeated statistic at this meeting was that there are about half a million tonnes of plastic bottle waste generated in the UK annually, and about double that quantity of mixed plastic waste. WRAP, the keeper of the comparative data everyone is using, reckons the plastic bottle recycling is broadly under control but mixed plastic waste (food containers, mainly) is hardly recycled at all. We are at least two to three years away from efficient mixed plastics recycling at the level PET bottle recycling now enjoys. But look out for new Perfs (plastics recycling facilities) coming on stream early in the 2010s.

Downcycling valuable plastic waste into timber-replacement extruded joists for park benches — one of the most common uses for visibly recycled plastics at the product design exhibitions which Pli attends — looks outmoded. To paraphrase Paul Davidson of WRAP, it turns out that wood does grow on trees: why would you replace it with plastic that can be used in higher-value products? We agree. Pli works to find ways of maintaining or even increasing the value of the recycled plastics we use in our products.

Here’s the final note I jotted down in my notebook as I was listening to the speakers summarise their perspectives on the need for greater emphasis on the collection, reprocessing and reuse of mixed plastic waste: “If they need a UK manufacturing end-market, why not just give it to us?” Seemed to make sense at the time.

For a more comprehensive discussion of the meeting, have a look at Let’s Recycle’s coverage here…

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