New £1m Flexible Plastic Fund to boost flexible plastic recycling in UK

A new initiative has been launched in the UK by five of the largest branded manufacturers in the country which aims to promote and support flexible plastic recycling in an economically viable way. In a joint effort - and a UK industry first - Mars UK, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever have now established a £1m Flexible Plastic Fund. The idea, say the scheme’s founders, is to increase the supply of recycled plastic and to boost the circularity of the material by giving it a stable value. This will motivate investment in much-needed jobs and infrastructure to make flexible plastic recycling a financially sustainable system in the UK. The recycled plastic will be turned into a range of products including non-food-grade plastic, non-food-grade film and food-grade film.

The project is being led by B Corp-certified producer compliance scheme, Ecosurety, with support from environmental charity, Hubbub. Flexible plastics include plastic bags, wrappers, films, pouches, packets and sachets and are described as ‘plastic bags and wrapping’, ‘soft plastics’ or ‘flexible plastics’. The Fund will feature a graded payment hierarchy, but will guarantee a minimum value of £100 per tonne of recycled product to incentivise recyclers to process flexible plastic. The ultimate goal is to arrive at a circular model of production where flexible plastic packaging can be recycled into plastic packaging, including food-grade, again and again.

“Historically the UK recycling system has not provided enough motivation to recycle flexible plastics,” Robbie Staniforth, Head of Innovation and Policy at Ecosurety, pointed out. “By creating a sustainable market for this material, longer term improvements can be made to ensure the flexible plastic that remains necessary for packaging is reliably recycled and eventually contributes to a circular economy, thereby tackling plastic pollution.”

New research from the University of Sheffield indicates that among consumers, the willingness to recycle their flexible plastic waste is strong, with up to 95% saying they would do so given the opportunity. Currently, however, just 16% of UK local authorities offer household collection of flexible plastics. As a result, a mere 6% of this type of packaging - which represented 22% of all UK consumer plastic packaging in 2019 - actually gets recycled.

To address this gap, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have now already signed up to support the initiative by hosting flexible plastic collection points in selected stores across the UK. Several other major retailers are set to follow suit. 

However, the long-term ambition of the Fund is to enable a circular, UK based flexible plastic recycling market that allows flexible plastic recycling via household collections. 

Collection is not the only issue, however, as flexible plastics, due to their structure, are challenging to process, often contaminating rigid plastic recycling and clogging up machinery. This could be overcome by creating a separate flexible plastic recycling stream. 

As Trewin Restorick, CEO and co-founder of Hubbub noted: “People are ready and willing to recycle their flexible plastics - we just have to make the infrastructure work.”

The initiative will provide fully audited transparency – at least 80% of the plastics collected will be recycled in the UK – rising to 100% by 2023. Until 2023, where there are currently limits in UK capacity and technology, up to 20% could be exported to qualifying facilities in Europe only. All material will be fully traceable and tracked from the collector through to new products.

Unlike many other schemes, recyclers will only be paid if the plastic is definitely recycled. The manufacturers contributing to the Flexible Plastic Fund will then be able to access the Packaging Recovery Notes (“PRNs”) generated by the scheme. These notes are the evidence proving that a tonne of packaging has, in fact, been recycled, recovered or exported

“This will give flexible plastic recycling the kick-start it needs to be viable on a much larger scale,” said Mark Pawsey, MP and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Packaging Manufacturing Industry. “I believe industry-led collaboration is at the heart of tackling many of the environmental challenges facing us. I hope to see more and more corporations joining together as a force for good over the coming months.”

The Flexible Plastic Fund is calling for recyclers, manufacturers and retailers to participate in the scheme, to help drive solutions to flexible plastic waste in the UK.