Only 5% of virgin plastic in the UK is currently recycled, due to the lack of plastic recycling sites. Plans for the UK’s first plastic recycling park were given the green light in 2022 – the £165m park will be developed at Protos, the strategic energy and resource hub near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. It will have the UK’s first waste plastic to hydrogen facility and a PET (polyethylene terephthalate) recycling plant that will take food and beverage packaging, such as plastic bottles, and recycle them for use in making new packaging products.
The UK is far behind many other countries in the EU, such as Germany, which leads the way in plastic recycling and Belgium. In 2024, Svensk Plaståtervinning opened the world’s largest plastic sorting plant “Site Zero” in Motala, Sweden, which will sort all Swedish plastic packaging waste into 12 different fractions.
The UK government’s economic incentive to encourage companies to use recycled plastics in packaging, the PPT (Plastic Packaging Tax), was introduced on April 1, 2022. Producers of plastic packaging manufactured in, or imported into, the UK must pay GBP 200 per tonne of plastic packaging if it contains less than 30% recycled plastic. The tax does not apply to manufacturers and importers of less than 10 tonnes of plastic packaging per year, packaging exported from the UK, or packaging that is used for licenced human medicines. The United Kingdom’s HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) announced in 2023 that it “collected GBP 276 million (€323 million) in plastic packaging tax (PPT) receipts in the financial year 2022 to 2023”.
Spain and Italy have also passed laws containing plastic packaging tax provisions. But while the Spanish tax entered into force as scheduled on January 1, 2023, Italy postponed its implementation (not for the first time) until further notice.
If companies can prove they are making specific, measurable circularity commitments, with tangible results, they don’t need to pay those taxes – but without the plastic recycling facilities, this continues to be a problem. Companies are looking at ways to reward consumers if they recycle, but how do they prove to the government that this is happening? This is one of the many questions which is currently being raised.
Julia Swales talked to Phil Wood, Director Strategic Programmes UK and Ireland at Mondelez International and asked him how his company are coping with the difficulties of recycling plastics.
Currently, the majority of Mondelez packaging is paper-based, glass or metal and this is all recycled or recyclable. The other portion of its packaging is mostly made up of flexible plastic films used to preserve foods and prevent food waste.
By 2025, 100% of its packaging around the globe will be recyclable. In addition to the great impact this has on the environment, using less packaging provides an economic benefit by reducing material, transportation and disposal costs.
Cadbury packaging, for example, is made of post-consumer recycled PET – the plastic has to be chemically recycled through using specialist products and programs. There’s investment going into this now and Mondelez has joined a pact with a number of FMCG suppliers and retailers. Mondelez intends to replace the PET used in Christmas Selection Box Trays with cardboard in the future, and Cadbury Milk Tray has also removed the cellophane plastic wrapping from the outside of its box.
The Mondelez brand Philadelphia has launched a cream cheese carton made from 100% recycled plastic – it claims to be the first cream cheese brand to achieve this. It hasn’t been easy, as recycled plastic is so hard to come by. This is an important step towards limiting waste while supporting a closed loop system. Mondelez is also aiming to reduce virgin rigid plastic by 25% because it is difficult to recycle and therefore more environmentally impacting than the foil wrapper, for example.
It’s clear that companies such as Mondelez need more governmental support, such as the building of more plastic recycling parks – the plastic packaging tax is raking in millions, but having little effect. The other option of course, is to replace plastics with other packaging, as Mondelez is doing. For consumers, a scheme similar to the one in Germany, where you receive money for every plastic bottle that’s put into a bank in supermarkets, would make a big difference. The UK has a long way to go in the journey towards reducing and recycling plastic in packaging, but Mondelez seems to be one of the companies leading the way.
Author: Julia Swales
Source: Ti Insight
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