UK Plastics Recycling Rates Are Greatly Inflated, Finds Report

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The recent report published by the leading environmental consultancy firm Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd alleges that the actual recycling rates for plastics packaging in the UK is far less than the official figures. The report titled “Plastic Packaging-Shedding Light on the UK Data” states that official figures are exaggerated by nearly 10% than the real recycling rates. As a result of this discrepancy, the UK, in all possibilities, might have missed the EU recycling targets between 2008 and 2012.

According to the report, the UK recycling system is not really as effective in promoting recycling as implied by the reported figures. In accordance with official statistics, the UK households and businesses generated a total of 2.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste in 2015. However, Eunomia claims that there are high chances of producers’ under-reporting the amount of packaging that they produce. Based on this, the amount of waste produced could be much higher, at around 3.5 million tonnes.

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As a result, the recycling rate of 39%, reported to Eurostat, for the year could come down significantly. The real recycling rate could be lower by at least 10 percentage points, Eunomia noted. The actual recycling rate could be somewhere between 23% and 29%. Also, the real rates in 2013 would have been in the range of 18%-23%.

The report highlights the ambiguity in reporting amounts of generated and recycled plastics packaging. The obligated companies generally do not report additional labels attached to plastic packaging as part of that packaging stream. However, the recycling rate is not calculated in that way. Also, the contamination in exported materials is not taken into account, as all exported materials are generally counted as recycled.

However, Valpak, the UK environmental services provider stated that there has been no evidence so far, of producers under-reporting their plastics production.