Pledge 4 Plastics recycling campaign kicks off in UK to achieve Govt imposed targets by 2017

10-Sep-14

Partners in the Plastics 2020 consortium have pledged their support for the recently-launched ‘Pledge 4 Plastics’ recycling campaign and announced they are to adopt an existing action plan to help the industry hit government-imposed targets by 2017, as per prw.com. The British Plastics Federation (BPF), the Packaging and Films Association (Pafa) and Plastics Europe said ‘Pledge 4 Plastics’ would play “an important part in helping councils to convince consumers to do the right thing and ensure that they proactively recycle the plastics packaging they use”. The three bodies also said they intended to adopt the Plastics Industry Recycling Action Plan (Pirap) and develop it to help the industry achieve recycling targets set by ministers two years ago. Pirap was set up in the wake of the coalition government’s announcement in the 2012 Budget that it wanted to see recycling targets increased from 32% in 2012 to 57% by 2017. The Pirap programme has highlighted a number of areas where improvements could be made to enhance collection rates, adopt best-in-class collection methods, optimise sorting infrastructure and develop end markets. But Plastics 2020 said higher-then-the-UK targets set by the European Commission would demand urgent action by all stakeholders “and a step change in all of these areas”. The Plastics 2020 consortium said better infrastructure links and closer working relationships between the relevant stakeholders would help develop and establish a vibrant, job-creating recycling business sector across the country.