“All parties” were currently focused on getting more consistency in packaging, and reforming the discredited Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) system would be a vital part of making the journey possible, BPF plastics and flexible packaging group director Barry Turner told Food Manufacture.
“The use of plastics has taken off dramatically over recent years, but the waste management infrastructure has failed to keep up,” said Turner. “I think that has come into sharp focus now, and I’m pleased that it has.
‘You have to spend money’
“You have to spend money to increase collection and bring in new technologies, including chemical recycling.”
Unlike mechanical recycling, which relies on clean, polymer-specific waste streams – especially for food-grade recyclate – chemical recycling breaks different polymers down into their component parts, some of which can be used to create new plastics.
“The new model of chemical recycling uses low-capacity plants, which can be deployed at materials recovery facility level,” he said. “It’s the most exciting development I’ve seen for a long time.”
Existing mechanical recycling plants
Because the technology does not require huge waste volumes to operate cost-effectively, it could also sit alongside existing mechanical recycling plants, taking films, laminates, black trays, and so on, while leaving the segregated bottle waste to the main plant.
Talk about plastics-free supermarket aisles and, more recently, taxes for single-use plastics only risked confusing consumers, Turner argued.
“The packaging that we bring home and put in our fridge is not typically the material that’s causing the biggest problems in the environment,” he added. “It also deflects attention away from the important issues around better collection and recycling.”