Plastic recycling is a bit of a minefield, not easy to explain to people and very different from other materials.

Firstly, consider the amount of plastic that the average household throws away.

Plastic bags, various types of bottle, cling film, margarine tubs, microwave meal containers and yoghurt pots are just a few of the items regularly thrown away.

Each of these items is made from a different type of plastic.

Therein lies the problem.

Unlike most other materials like cardboard, paper, glass or metal, plastic is a generic term covering very different materials that are suitable for different purposes.

If all plastic was collected together and sent for reprocessing, the finished recycled product would be very poor quality since too many different types of material would be mixed together.

Metal cans, for example, are all made from steel or aluminium, which are easy to sort and which are easy to remanufacture without quality control issues.

Even aluminium foil often contains plastic material, which explains why that is not readily recyclable.

Most local authorities (including Adur, Worthing, Arun and Horsham) will only collect the three most common types of plastic, known as PET (polyeththylene terephthalate), HDPE (high density polyethylene) and PVC (polyvinyl chloride).

Generally speaking, these plastics are used for making bottles and can be identified by the recycling symbol (three arrows forming a triangle) with the numbers 1, 2 or 3 contained within the logo.

No other plastics should be put out for collection and these will include margarine tubs, ice cream tubs yoghurt pots and DIY product containers), which are all made from polypropylene or polystyrene.

Many of these containers can be heavily contaminated with food or other residues (such as paints, glues, solvents and oils), making them unattractive to recycle due to the extra cost of cleaning the material before reprocessing can begin.

In contrast, plastic bottles are normally fairly clean and the collected bottles will compare favourably with virgin material.

The extra reprocessing costs associated with polystyrenes and polypropylenes have suppressed demand for recovered containers at the expense of using virgin material.

Some local authorities across the country have taken the risk of collecting additional types of plastic in the hope that demand (particularly from the Far East) will pick up, but in some cases the material is stockpiled or even disposed of because markets are not yet sustainable.

The position in West Sussex is that until there is sufficient demand for other types of plastic not already collected, items such as yoghurt pots and margarine tubs will be left out of recycling.

As the price of oil continues to increase it is hoped that this will stimulate demand for all types of plastic and that in the near future Adur and Worthing Councils, along with our other county partners, will be able to collect material not yet accepted.


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