Page 36 - Plastics News October 2024
P. 36
COMPANY NEWS
vegetable and salad packaging. Berry said it re- of the investigation results.
processes the recycled material into pellets and
blends it with recovered agricultural films to pro- “Recycling soft plastic poses a challenge, par-
ticularly in terms of the quality of material col-
duce bin liners with suitable strength.
lected, but at Berry we are continuing to work to
A recent investigation by the Environmental In- make recycling of this material a reality through
vestigation Agency and Everyday Plastics has the creation of useful second life products,” said
found, however, that most plastics collected at Mike Baxter, external affairs director – Berry
supermarket take-back schemes end up being Global recycled products. “For example, front
incinerated and not recycled. of store soft plastic currently goes into the pro-
duction of new refuse sacks, while other flexible
As part of the investigation, Everyday Plastic plastic is used to produce our Sustane recyclate
volunteers placed tracking devices into 40 bun- which goes back into packaging such as shrink
dles of soft plastic packaging and dropped them film,” he added.
at front-of-store collection points at Sainsbury's
and Tesco supermarkets across England. The in- Berry further said that its Heanor plant holds
vestigation found that 70% of the tracked soft RecyClass certification that confirms full trace-
plastic bundles that reached a known destina- ability throughout the recycling and production
tion were burnt, not recycled. The rest ended processes.
up at recycling facilities that recycle soft plastic
waste into products other than packaging, which “Certification at Heanor therefore provides Berry
the report calls ‘downcycling’. Most of these fa- customers with complete reassurance as to the
cilities were located in Türkiye. quality and authenticity of the recycled material
produced,” the company said in a statement.
In particular, seven tracked soft plastics bundles
were turned into fuel pellets, four were recycled The scrutiny on soft plastics take-back schemes
comes as the UK prepares to make kerbside col-
overseas, three were incinerated in the UK, two
were incinerated overseas, and one was recy- lection of flexible plastic packaging for recycling
mandatory in March 2027. In 2022, only 7% of
cled in the UK.
soft plastics placed on the UK market were col-
Of the 18 Tesco tracked bundles, only six reached lected for recycling at the kerbside.
a final destination. Only one was recycled in the
UK. Four were recycled overseas and one was In 2023, the UK set a record for plastic packag-
converted into fuel pellets. ing recycling. The country mechanically recycled
52.5% of its plastic waste, a 2.14% increase from
Of the 22 Sainbury’s tracked bundles, 11 six the previous, record-breaking, year.
reached a final destination and all were burnt.
Source – Sustainable Plastics
Berry announced its new investment in the wake
36 PLASTICS NEWS October 2024
