Plastics: Recycling

(asked on 28th August 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many recycling plants in the UK accept and process (a) polycarbonate, (b) polyethylene, (c) polyethylene terephthalate and (d) bisphenol A; and where are they located.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 8th September 2020

Defra does not hold information on the number and location of recycling plants in the UK that process these materials. The Environment Agency maintains a list of accredited recycling plants in England and of these 64 are listed as accepting plastic waste to be sorted or recycled. Regulators in the devolved administrations maintain registers of plants in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

For food contact purposes only polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are recycled in the UK. There are currently eight sites in England and one in Scotland that have applied for authorisation to recycle PET for use in food contact. There are a further two sites in England that have applied to recycle HDPE for this purpose.

Some plastics reprocessing sites are regulated at local authority level and information is not held centrally on these.

Reticulating Splines