Flexible plastic packaging assembly identifies recycling challenges
A briefing paper reveals why flexible plastics remain one of the UK’s hardest recycling challenges and examines next steps.
Although flexible plastics make up more than a quarter of consumer plastic packaging, only around 7% is recycled each year, according to the Henry Royce Institute supported Everyday Flexible Plastic Packaging Recycling Assembly briefing.
Much of the rest is incinerated, exported, or ends up in landfill.
To explore why this is happening, researchers and practitioners from across the plastics value chain came together at the University of Manchester for the first in a series of assemblies on the topic, led by Dr Torik Holmes, (Hallsworth Research Fellow, The Sustainable Consumption Institute and University of Manchester) and supported by members of the Royce Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub (SMI Hub).
The assembly was asked: what would it take to make the UK a world leader in flexible plastic packaging recycling?
Participants identified four major barriers:
- Not enough UK recycling infrastructure
- Packaging that’s difficult to recycle by design
- Weak end markets
- Poor data
These findings reflect wider policy concerns highlighted in a recent Policy@Manchester blog, “Still trash? UK flexible plastic packaging recycling and infrastructural contraction”, which warns that recycling ambitions risk outpacing real-world capacity.
The Assembly agreed on three clear priorities:
- Stronger, smarter legislation that supports UK recycling rather than export or incineration.
- Investment in innovation, including new sorting and recycling technologies and food-grade recycled plastics.
- Better end markets, so recycling flexible plastics makes economic and environmental sense.
A follow-up event will focus on practical solutions and examples of what already works, and how those approaches can be scaled.
You can read the full Everyday flexible plastic packaging recycling assembly briefing online.
