Fife site tackles challenge of hard-to-recycle soft plastics
A pioneering new recycling facility which will reprocess ‘hard-to-recycle’ soft plastics has opened its doors in Fife.
The site is the first of its kind to process a mix of plastics – including film – into reusable materials, with the aim of keeping the material in a ‘closed loop’ and prevent it from being exported overseas.
Co-owned by Morrisons and operated by recycling plant specialists Yes Recycling, the new facility has the capacity to recycle 15,000 tonnes of post-consumer plastic packaging a year, including hard-to-recycle flexible food packaging such as sweet wrappers, crisp packets and salad bags.
It will use patented technology to turn these low grade plastics into plastic flakes, pellets and Ecosheet – a new and environmentally-friendly alternative to plywood, which can be widely used in the construction and agriculture industries.
Omer Kutluoglu, Co-owner of Yes Recycling, said: “The UK is in desperate need of more plastic recycling capacity and, in particular, for the so-called ‘hard-to-recycle’ plastic waste such as flexible food packaging.
“Our new next-generation recycling plant, which we’ve developed over the last seven years, is designed to tackle exactly these materials. It is a blueprint for the future and will help to kick-start the UK’s plastics recycling industry. It will mean we can keep plastic in our own country’s circular economy and out of our seas and oceans.”
The UK government has mandated that, by 2027, all local councils across the UK must collect soft and flexible plastic films from households through kerbside recycling collections. On current projections, such a target would require one million tonnes of plastic packaging recycling capacity.
Unlike ‘high grade’ hard plastics, such as plastic bottles, which have been collected and recycled for years, recycling rates for ‘low-grade’ soft plastics are generally poor.
Limitations in the technology to recycle this material into commercially viable products means it is typically incinerated, sent to landfill or exported overseas.
Fife Council is currently one of a limited number of UK local councils who collect and segregate hard-to-recycle plastic from its customer collections and send it to a recycling facility.
Cireco Scotland – who operate Fife Council’s recycling collection and segregation service – will send all hard-to-recycle soft plastics to the new site, as will Morrisons from their distribution sites and stores.
Jamie Winter, Procurement Director at Morrisons, said: “We’ve done a significant amount of work to reduce our plastic use and now we want to help build a UK infrastructure to recycle the plastic that we may still need to use. By recycling these problematic plastics here in the UK we can give them a new life.”
Organisations including Nestlé UK & Ireland and Zero Waste Scotland have also been involved in the development of the new recycling plant, which will create around 60 new jobs for the Fife region, whilst transforming the recycling options for locals.
David Gunn, Zero Waste Scotland’s Recycling Improvement Fund Manager, said: “Zero Waste Scotland has been supporting local authorities through the Recycling Improvement Fund, which helps councils to enhance and invest in their recycling and reuse services.
“It’s great to see Fife Council using this support to enable householders to recycle soft plastic by upgrading CIRECO’s material recycling facility. This will significantly enhance the local authority’s ability to deal with ‘hard-to-recycle’ plastics that would otherwise be exported overseas.
“Instead, the separated soft plastics are now supplied to Yes Recycling for processing into Ecosheet, transforming what would have been waste into a highly useful and sustainable product – a fantastic example of a circular economy at work.”
Image courtesy of Morrisons.
