The 2017 RECOUP Household Plastics Collection Survey, launched at the RECOUP plastics recycling conference, has highlighted the need to invest in kerbside recycling collections infrastructure and communications.

The RECOUP survey reports the milestone of collecting half a million tonnes of plastics packaging from UK households has been achieved. The 512,475 tonnes collected for recycling in 2016 consisted of over 340,000 tonnes of plastic bottles and nearly 170,000 tonnes of plastic pots, tubs and trays.

Just five Local Authorities in the UK now do not provide a collection service that includes plastic bottles as part of their kerbside collection service and 76 per cent (298) of Local Authorities in the UK collects plastic pots, tubs and trays.

Recycling Collector for Coventry City Council

The increase in collection of plastics bottles from UK household represents an increase of less than one per cent from the previous year. New collection schemes are also slowing down, with only seven new kerbside schemes in 2016 reporting that they introduced the collection of plastic pots, tubs and trays.

The opportunities for increased collections of plastic packaging are clear. In the UK the RECOUP Survey reports a collection rate in 2016 for all types of plastic bottles of 58 per cent, with a 32 per cent rate for plastic pots, tubs and trays.

 The RECOUP Survey confirms, that from nearly 160 responses, 51 per cent of Local Authorities in the UK received budget cuts for providing waste and recycling collections or delivery of communications to householders about waste and recycling. This represents a significant change to the results when the same question was asked the previous year – when just 13 per cent reported budget cuts.

The national plastics recycling communications initiative Pledge 4 Plastics continues to provide resources to deliver plastics recycling communications. These resources were funded by RECOUP members and are available through the Pledge 4 Plastics Resource Library.

There are over 100 Local Authorities who would like to work in partnership to deliver a match funded Pledge 4 Plastics communications campaign, but at present there remains no central or dedicated budget to develop new resources or deliver plastics recycling communications.

With the ongoing debate about how to increase the collection rate for plastic bottles and a potential role for Deposit Return Schemes (DRS), comparing the UK’s plastic bottle collection rate with other countries is not comparing ‘like-for-like’ data, and has been likened to comparing ‘apples and oranges’.

Other EU countries report they have a household drinks bottle or PET plastic bottle collection rate by using a deposit return (DRS) scheme. However, there are different and unique challenges for each country depending on the level of kerbside collection infrastructure in place and regional geographical and demographical characteristics of where a DRS scheme is used.

Where high collection rates exist for plastic drinks bottles there is generally a lower overall collection rate for plastic packaging, with far lower or no recycling rates for non-drinks bottles and plastic pots, tubs and trays. Valpak recently published data that reports a 74 per cent collection rate for drinks bottles consumed in the household stream in the UK, and this provides evidence that any future direction of improving plastics packaging collection rates needs careful cost-benefit analysis.