A new recycling facility is now open in Fife which will reprocess ‘hard-to-recycle’ soft plastics, aiming to keep the material in a ‘closed loop’ and save it from being exported overseas.
The site is co-owned by Morrisons and was constructed - and will be operated - by recycling plant business Yes Recycling.
A number of other organisations, including Nestlé UK & Ireland and Zero Waste Scotland, have also been involved in the development of the plant.
It uses patented technology, developed over the last seven years, to turn flexible food packaging into plastic flakes, pellets and new Ecosheet, an alternative to plywood for use in the construction industry and in the agriculture industry.
At full capacity, the site will recycle 15,000 tonnes of post-consumer plastic packaging a year.
The soft plastic - including chocolate wrappers, crisp packets and food film - will be sent to the site from Morrisons distribution sites and stores, and by Cireco Scotland, which operates Fife Council’s household kerbside collection service, and will also separate out the plastics ready for recycling.
Unlike ‘high grade’ plastics - which are more valuable and which have been harvested for many years - this ‘low grade’ soft plastic has not been recycled widely due to limitations of technology to recycle this material into commercially viable products.
So it has typically been incinerated, ended up in landfill, or has even been exported overseas – often to countries whose infrastructure cannot accommodate it.
The UK Government has mandated that by 2027, soft plastic film and flexibles need to be collected from all households through kerbside recycling collections, by all councils in the UK.
The facility will create around 60 new jobs.
Omer Kutluoglu, co-owner of Yes Recycling, said: “The new plant is a blueprint for the future and will help to kick-start the UK’s plastics recycling industry – it will mean we can keep plastic in our own country’s ‘circular economy’ and out of our seas and oceans.”
Jamie Winter, procurement director at Morrisons, said: “We’ve done a significant amount of work to reduce our plastic use and now we want to help build a UK infrastructure to recycle the plastic that we may still need to use.”
Zero Waste Scotland’s recycling improvement fund manager David Gunn commented: “It’s great to see Fife Council using this support to enable householders to recycle soft plastic by upgrading CIRECO’s material recycling facility.
“This will significantly enhance the local authority’s ability to deal with ‘hard-to-recycle’ plastics that would otherwise be exported overseas.
“Instead, the separated soft plastics are now supplied to Yes Recycling for processing into Ecosheet, transforming what would have been waste into a highly useful and sustainable product – a fantastic example of a circular economy at work.”
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