Is recycling bags and wrapping worth it?

Membership of The UK Plastics Pact covers 75% of all consumer plastic packaging placed on the market, and use of plastics has fallen by 8% since it began in 2018. The Pact identified key plastic items for members to remove and encourages reducing plastics by avoiding excessive packaging – such as for uncut fresh produce. 

Today, 100 UK businesses are eliminating unnecessary and problematic plastic packaging through the Pact and working to replace single-use with reuseable systems.

And while the world anticipates the outcome of the Global Plastics Treaty, already there is a global network of twelve similar Plastics Pacts spanning every populated continent, actively tackling plastic waste. These twelve have eliminated 360,000 tonnes of problematic or unnecessary plastic by taking tens of billions of individual plastic items out of circulation. In 2022, 2.2 million tonnes of virgin plastic was prevented by using recycled plastic in packaging across this global Pact Network.  

But however hard these Pacts work, single use plastic packaging remains the fastest growing area of plastic globally and most is ‘virgin’ plastic, made from fossil oil.

It’s currently impossible to eliminate all plastic wrapping from all products, and so we need recycling solutions. Plastic bags and wrapping are a key focus for the UK Plastics Pact as not enough are recycled at scale to classify as ‘recyclable’ and this cannot happen until they are collected from homes and businesses nationwide – by 2028. Only then will they create the demand needed to develop the sorting and processing infrastructure, as well as grow end markets for this recyclate. 

But the planet cannot wait for a perfect system, and industry shouldn’t wait to act. 

WRAP encourages Plastic Pact supermarkets to provide collection points at front of store to begin collecting flexible plastic to pave the way for that recycling infrastructure, and to encourage new behaviours in people around recycling plastic wrapping. In parallel, businesses are improving packaging design so that once collected, flexible plastics can be more easily recycled into new products or packaging. Examples of design changes include Finish dishwashing tablets, Cheesestrings, packaging for meat supplied by Cranswick Country Foods and Ben’s microwavable rice.

As a result of these early collections, the UK has seen investment in new sorting processes and capacity grow, specifically for recycling post-consumer film waste. The sector is now better placed to address the challenges of this material and already, recycled bags and wrapping are being turned into refuse sacks, bags for life, collation wrap, construction films, buckets, plastic lumber and street furniture. 

The goal is for a significant proportion of consumer plastic film packaging to be recycled back into film packaging, but this is not easy and advanced recycling methods are needed. Even so, there are examples of recycling flexible plastics into food-grade packaging including Heinz beans ‘snap pots’, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Kingsmill 50/50 and Nestle’s Kit Kat. Scaling this requires changes to regulations to recognise this as a valid form of recycling.  

The dominating barriers for participating in recycling schemes are people being unsure of what can be recycled, and packaging not being easy to recycle. Citizens want simple messages telling them clearly what to do with packaging, which on-pack labelling provides. But a lack of confidence that material is being recycled also needs addressing and with plastic bag and wrapping recycling being in its infancy, this has become an issue.

It is a complex message to communicate and more needs to be done to show people what happens to the material collected, including being honest about what isn’t recycled, and why. Crucially, people should not be discouraged or put off using the available services despite their imperfections. What’s for sure, if it’s not placed in the recycling, it will not be recycled!

Much of this material - around half of all plastic packaging in fact - is exported from the UK for recycling and while most waste operators are reputable and are genuinely recycling, transparency is lacking and there are still too many instances of illegal dumping of waste. With bags and wrapping being a lower grade material, compared to plastic bottles, the risk of dumping is higher.

The UK should reduce its reliance on exports of plastic waste as soon as possible and work towards a longer-term goal of processing it all within its domain.  Meanwhile, the Government should press ahead with plans to implement a ban of export waste to non-OECD countries, where the risk for mismanagement of waste is highest. Significant action is needed to mainstream reuse and refill systems too, to support the removal of more plastics - another goal of The UK Plastics Pact. WRAP is bringing together the supermarkets to achieve this huge step, as well as continuing to share learnings through the Global Plastics Pact Network.

The issue of plastic waste requires whole system change, and as the example of bags and wrappings show – it is not all going to happen neatly overnight. Significant efforts have been made but much more is needed to remove and reduce problematic and unnecessary plastic, install reuse and refill systems, as well as ensuring what cannot be removed gets recycled.

The journey to achieve scaled recycling systems is not straight-forward. It requires multiple actions taken by businesses, governments and people for it to succeed. But succeed it must - the planet is relying on us.