UK Plastics Industry Works on Recycling Standards

The Plastics Recycling Council have just launched a project to generate
a range of standards for the plastics recycling industry.

The BPF Recycling Council Ltd is the not-for-profit company that
represents the UK plastics recycling industry. This industry converts
over 400,000 tonnes of waste plastic into new products every year.
Funded by the Department of Trade & Industry, Biffaward, EMR and ICL,
the project aims to create new standards for the waste plastic which is
the feedstock for plastics recyclers. It will also generate a framework
whereby recyclate can be categorised according to its technical
performance.

The BPF Recycling Council believes that the lack of recognised
standards has been clearly identified as a barrier to many areas of
growth of the plastics recycling industries. Further UK and EU
legislation is scheduled for introduction over the next decade which
will require a 300% increase in the volume of post-use plastics
recycling. Without these standards, these new targets will be difficult
to achieve.

The paper, glass, metals and other materials recycling industries
already have internationally recognised grades of sorted waste, but
plastics recycling, being a relatively new industry, has not yet
developed standards for waste. The project will develop standards that
will allow waste generators and merchants to sort plastics waste to
predetermined standards, and the recyclers will be able to specify the
waste and scrap that they need for recycling.

The second standard will be a framework, agreed by the plastics
processing industries who buy recyclate from the plastics recyclers. It
will enable plastics recyclers to generate their own technical data
sheets to an accepted format with known data and tolerances that the
processing industries demand