In 2020, Recoup’s Pledge2Recycle Plastics brand launched the Citizen Plastics Recycling Behaviours Insights Survey. The survey, conducted in October of that year, consisted of an informal questionnaire with images alongside questions on recycling behaviours of key items of plastics packaging such as bottles, pots, tubs, and trays and films and flexibles.
Since then, a second survey has now been held, the results of which Recoup has now published.
The survey was hosted on the Pledge2Recyle website and received over 6500 responses from across the UK, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of its kind. The results suggest that overall, attitudes have remained stagnant, with no indications of any sustained behaviour change or changes in declared recycling from October 2020 to November 2021.
According to these latest results, 95% of citizens claim that they recycle plastic drinks bottles every time. This declines to 83% with shampoo and conditioner bottles and 80% for cleaning products and sauce bottles.
These rates fall even further in the case of more complicated packs, i.e., when the packs are more difficult to clean or less likely to be collected kerbside. 52% of citizens claim to recycle trays that had previously contained cooked food or ready meals. 62% of citizens claim to recycle fresh meat trays every time, rising to 73% for clear fruit and veg clear trays.
Citizens also reported being confused about ‘recyclable’ packs, such as mono-material toothpaste tubes, that are not allowed to be disposed of in the kerbside collection schemes.
There is a need for synergy across the value chain for items where technical recyclability claims cannot be matched by infrastructure, sorting, and capture capabilities said Recoup.Technical advances in pack design to render packs more recyclable need to match progress in sorting, reprocessing and end markets.
The picture that emerges is a complex one, said Anne Hitch, head of Citizen & Stakeholder Strategy at Recoup. Clearly, however, ‘simplicity is the key to citizen engagement both in pack design and recycling messaging… Convenience is paramount to unlocking the potential for higher plastics recycling rates’.
The survey also found that less than half of the citizens adhere to the guidelines for recycling something as simple as a drinks bottle. While industry guidelines state that these should be empty, rinsed, and have the lid on, only 43% said they prepared their bottles for recycling this way (43%).
The losses to the industry in terms of recyclate that could easily be recycled with existing infrastructure if citizens understood the importance of the preparation instructions are considerable.
The full report is currently available to Recoup members only but will be released into the open domain in early May 2022
Meanwhile, the Pledge2Recycle Plastics team are with a number of councils in Kent to explore how plastics recycling communications can result in the desired outcomes in terms of plastics recycling behaviour change. The results of this project are due in the open domain in July 2022 with further activations scheduled to follow elsewhere in the UK.