Circular Films: Pathways to Scalable Recycling - Executive Summary

Consumer plastic film and flexible packaging accounts for more than a quarter of all plastic packaging placed on the UK market - yet only 7% is currently recycled. With mandatory kerbside collection for plastic films set to begin across England by March 2027 under Simpler Recycling, now is the time to take action.

WRAP’s new report, Circular Films: Pathways to Scalable Recycling, provides a detailed overview of the current UK landscape - including how plastic film is placed on the market, how it’s collected by local authorities and through front-of-store take-back schemes, and the capacity of UK reprocessing infrastructure. It also highlights key challenges and offers recommendations to accelerate progress toward a more circular economy for this more complex material. 

What’s in the Executive Summary? 

The full report is available to UK Plastics Pact members. However, this publicly available executive summary draws on the reports key insights, including:

• A UK market snapshot for consumer plastic film
• Overview of current collection and reprocessing capacity
• Challenges and opportunities ahead of 2027
• Key recommendations across five priority areas:
  • Design for recyclability
  • Scaling collection and infrastructure
  • Strengthening domestic markets
  • Policy and financial mechanisms
  • Citizen engagement and behaviour change.

Why this matters

As the volume of collected film is expected to rise significantly post-2027, we must ensure the UK has the systems in place to capture, sort, and recycle it effectively. No single organisation or sector can do this alone - collaboration across the value chain is essential.

Download the Executive Summary

The summary below outlines practical steps your organisation can take now to help build scalable, circular solutions for plastic film.