Figure 48 End markets of plastic products manufactured in the UK (by weight), 2005 (WRAP, 2007 (b))Another burden on recycling performances is the low quality of the recovered plastic which is likely to result in a
high loss rate during sorting. Compared to recovered plastics from other countries, UK material is reported to be
of lower quality (WRAP, 2007 (b)). This can be explained by the fact that most plastics are recovered from post-
consumer as co-mingled waste.
The lack of domestic recycling infrastructures
A further problem is the lack of recycling infrastructures in UK. For instance the UK does not have any polyester
fibre manufacturing capacity^ thus the recycling of PET bottles into fibres needs to be performed abroad (WRAP,
2007 (b)). The majority of mixed plastics are also exported because of a lack of domestic capacity. Around two-
thirds of the packaging plastics recovered from the UK waste stream are exported for recycling overseas, mainly
in China^ as illustrated below. Export of collected packaging plastics have almost tripled between 2005 and 2007
(see Figure 49) while the quantity of plastic reprocessed in the UK fell by about 20% (WRAP, 2007 (b)). The
impacts associated with long-distance transportation thus need to be added to the analysis of recycling. Transport
especially affects climate change and energy demand in particular. In addition, as the waste is mainly exported to
China, it means that energy derived from fossil fuels will be used for the recycling processes, which also increases
the environmental impacts. In order to maximise the environmental benefits of recycling it is thus essential to
develop the domestic recycling capacity. This does seem to be happening, as there has recently been progress in
‘closed-loop’ packaging recycling capacity in the UK, whereby for instance recycled food and beverage bottles can
be substituted for virgin PE (and PET) in bottle manufacture (AMA Research Ltd, 2009).
Figure 49 Exports of recovered plastics, in thousand tonnes (WRAP, 2007 (b))