Recoup Annual Meeting highlights shortfall in plastics recycling << Back to Main News Page Added: Thursday, 7 July 2005 “There is danger of a plastics recycling shortfall and producers need to act now to ensure national plastics recycling targets are achieved”. This was the stark message from the Recoup Annual General Meeting, held in London on June 23rd. Speaking at the event Brian Wood, Contracts Director from Valpak, provided a detailed review of the Packflow 2008 project that undertook a “gap analysis” to establish what extra activities would be required to ensure that 2008 packaging recycling targets are achieved. The findings showed that plastic bottle recycling will need to increase to a minimum of 100,000 tonnes per annum (almost 3 times the collections in 2004) by 2008. Even if this level is achieved there is no guarantee that targets would be hit. The analysis shows that even given expected growth in plastics recycling over the next 3 years there is a deficit of almost 115,000 tonnes between the expected position in 2008 and the target. The only conclusion is that much more effort is urgently required to establish new collection infrastructure for plastics packaging. Andrew Simmons, Recoup CEO, spoke about the requirement for businesses in the packaging industry to respond positively to this warning call. “Don’t do nothing - invest now in developing efficient collection infrastructure for plastics from household and ‘away from home sources’ or face a massively increased compliance cost bill and the likelihood of more draconian regulations and targets.” He supported this call for a longer-term strategy by providing examples of how many councils and offices were already collecting plastic bottles for recycling at little or no extra cost to landfilling them. Also speaking at the event Melissa Shinn, Senior Policy Officer at the European Environmental Bureau set out the longer term framework for European regulation on resources and recycling, and highlighted likely pressures for higher recycling targets post-2008 for plastics. She also noted drew attention to the debate over whether feedstock and blast furnace ‘recycling’ of plastics should be classified as recycling or recovery under the directive. She also summarised the lobbying position that EEB were adopting with the European Commission and Parliament to ensure a focus on materials recycling and the use of the waste hierarchy as a guiding principle for environmental policy. Members and guests entered into lively debate both in the meeting and over the members’ lunch particularly over issues of export of recyclables and whether there was a “level playing field” of regulation. Copies of presentations from the day are available electronically: click here.