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Stakeholders meet to discuss deteriorating recycling markets

Stakeholders in the waste and reprocessing industry and its supply chain gathered in London today (28 April) to discuss how to improve recyclate markets and support the reprocessing industry.

Stakeholders meet to discuss deteriorating recycling markets
Demand for recycled plastic has decreased as the price of oil has made virgin plastic marginally cheaper

The meeting, hosted by waste industry trade association the Environmental Services Association (ESA), discussed challenges in the UK’s recyclate markets, which have led two major UK reprocessors – Aylesford Newsprint and ECO Plastics – to go into administration in recent months.

A third UK reprocessing company, plastics firm Closed Loop Recycling, is also under immediate threat, stating last month that it would also ‘inevitably’ go into administration without support from government and retailers/dairies.

Although the downturn in markets has in part been caused by external factors, such as the drop in oil price (leading to virgin plastics being marginally cheaper than recycled plastics) and the fall in newspaper readership, the ESA sought to discuss what could be done by the whole supply chain, both immediately and in the longer term, to support the UK reprocessing industries.

'Everyone needs to work more closely with each other'

The ESA’s Recycling Policy Adviser Jakob Rindegren commented: “ESA is very concerned about recent downward trends in the UK’s recyclate markets, which are putting many waste and resource management companies, reprocessors and local authorities under severe pressure.

“In our view, everyone needs to work more closely with each other to ensure that all recyclable waste we collect also has a viable end market. This is absolutely critical if we truly want to treat waste as a resource, which is clearly important for creating a sustainable domestic resource industry, maximising value for local authority recycling services and meeting our recycling targets.

"The ESA roundtable brought together a range of stakeholders to discuss both what has caused the recent turbulence in recyclate markets and what to do about it. We are now looking for agreement on the main outcomes from that discussion, which, together with the other stakeholders, will be distilled into recommendations for the incoming local and national governments following the elections on 7 May.

"From ESA’s perspective, we would particularly like to tackle the issue of funding, given that achieving higher recycling targets is likely to cost more and will, to a lesser extent, be subsidised by recyclate sales going forward. Essentially, the funding will either have to come from the householder through council taxes, or from producers through producer responsibility schemes. However, increased funding would have to be tied with bringing in more efficiencies, not least by harmonising collection systems to a greater extent than today. But exactly what the recommendations from the roundtable will look like is, as mentioned, still to be decided."

The ESA meeting is the latest round-table event that aims to find a solution to the problem, after the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) held similar talks last month. However, the talks have been contentious, with members of the dairy industry refusing to attend a WRAP-brokered meeting to support the plastic reprocessing industry, claiming that competition law prevented their attendance.

Attendees of the ESA meeting include representatives from the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC), Closed Loop Recycling, and environmental consultancy Eunomia.

Find out more about the problems facing the UK reprocessing industry.

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