WASTE PLASTICS RECYCLING A GOOD PRACTICES GUIDE

BY AND FOR LOCAL & REGIONAL AUTHORITIES

These experiences will not be described further in this guide because most of the national Green
Dot systems provide valuable technical information.
However, it is interesting to analyse the factors which makes the selective collection, sorting and
recycling of plastic bottles possible and one of the most targeted waste plastics for L/RAs:
plastic bottles represent the main plastic packaging from households (46 per cent of
household plastic packaging in Belgium, 40 per cent in the UK).
most are made with only two kinds of polymer: PET and HDPE. There are still PVC
bottles but their use is declining.
The waste holder can easily recognise and separate plastic bottles from the rest of the
waste.
The plastic bottles are easy to recognise at the sorting plant. They can easily be separated
by resin or optically by colour.
There is a developed market for the sale of the sorted plastic bottles.
With increasing disposal costs, the selective collection and recycling of plastic bottles is
an option which is economically interesting.
L/RAs which want to extend the collection of waste plastics should look for streams which present
the same characteristics as those presented for plastic bottles:
Sufficient quantity: The waste agencies know by experience the main streams present in
their waste. It is necessary to identify the most common waste plastics. A waste characterisation can confirm and define the figures.
Homogeneous, clean and identifiable: The relevant waste plastics stream must be as
homogeneous and as clean as possible. For example, plastic toys are difficult to identify
because they are made of different resins. Films or flowerpots are made from only a few
of resins, which are quite easy to separate at the sorting plant and coffee cups can
easily be collected at catering establishments. EPS is also easy to identify by the waste
holder.
Possibility of sale for the sorted materials. It is important to check if there is a market
for the collected and sorted material and the quality requirements. Contacting the
plastics industry or a plastic recyclers association is helpful in order to define which are
the accepted streams, under which conditions.
Avoided disposal costs. The avoided disposal cost is certainly a strong driving force in the
decision to launch a recycling programme. While collection costs can be considerable
because of the high volume, low weight nature of plastics, selective targeting of
specific waste plastics and waste flows can be profitable with little or no additional
support. Therefore when evaluating the economic costs of introducing a selective
collection programme, avoided disposal costs must also be integrated.

A number of local and regional authorities have successfully established selective non-bottle
plastic collection schemes, encompassing a range of waste streams by applying the indicators
noted above. These include Plastretur in Norway; LIPOR in the Porto region of Portugal; BEP
and IMOG in the provinces of Namur and Courtrai in Belgium respectively; The Department
of Aveyron and the Syndicate of Municipalities of the Region of Rambouillet (SYMIRIS) in
France. Further details of these schemes can be found in the following chapter.

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WASTE PLASTICS RECYCLING A GOOD PRACTICES GUIDE

BY AND FOR LOCAL & REGIONAL AUTHORITIES

CHAPTER 5
How can local/regional authorities improve waste
plastics collection?
Household Waste Plastics
Collection schemes serving households include:
kerbside collection
neighbourhood containers
container parks
The type of collection scheme that L/RAs choose to adopt is influenced by the types of waste and
waste flows that are targeted; kerbside collection and neighbourhood containers are aimed towards
the collection of smaller plastic products, typically the packaging fraction; plastic bottles and, to a
lesser extent, films. Container parks however, enable larger plastic products to be collected, including
plastic furniture, pipes, window frames etc., which not only arise in household waste, but also the
commercial and industrial waste streams.
The choice of scheme will affect the collection rate for plastics within a L/RA. In Norway, a
study by the stfold Research Foundation compared two municipalities, Drammen and
Hamar, which are collecting plastic bottles using two different types of collection scheme.
In Drammen, a neighbourhood collection system was achieving a collection rate of 18 per
cent. In Hamar, where a kerbside collection system was being used, collection rates reached
around 55 per cent.

Kerbside collection
Most kerbside collection schemes collect plastic bottles. With the exception of the German DSD
scheme, no kerbside collection schemes for the collection of plastic films or other non-bottle waste
plastics from household were identified.

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