The plastics recycling industry, potentially worth £2bn and 5,000 jobs, is dying in the UK due to the Government's failure to close a loophole allowing 600,000 tons of plastic waste will be exported every year.
In the last two years, 21 plastic recycling and recycling plants across the UK have closed due to the scale of exports, the low price of virgin plastic and an influx of cheap plastic from Asia, according to data compiled by industry insiders.
UK plastic waste exports to developing countries increased by 84% in the first half of this yearwhat critics call the unethical and irresponsible waste of imperialism.
In particular, UK exports to Indonesia have risen sharply. The country is struggling with an environmental crisis from plastic pollution – amounting to more than 24,000 tons. Total exports of plastic waste in the first half of the year amounted to 317,747 tons.
Exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic waste to countries that do not have the ability to properly recycle it. increases the likelihood of serious environmental pollution and also puts the lives of waste workers at risk.
James McLeary, managing director of Biffa polymers, said the industry was facing challenges with plants closing across the country.
Plastic recycling sites that have closed in the past two years include the Biffa plant in Sunderland, which had a capacity to process 39,000 tonnes of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) used in packaging annually, and three Viridor sites. Vanden Recycling also closes plastic processing plant in Whittlesey, Peterborough.
Storing waste collected from UK households for cleaning, sorting, recycling and turning into recycled products is better for the environment, sequesters the carbon contained in plastic and creates jobs and economic growth, experts say.
But policymakers have failed to make the key changes needed to stop incentives to export plastic waste.
McLeary said the continued export of plastic waste should be an affront to our civilized society. He gave examples of deaths out of 200 young people in Turkey which were revealed earlier this year by ISIG Meclisi, which carried out the first analysis of workplace deaths in the country's manufacturing industry. The UK was the largest exporter of plastic waste to Turkey in 2023.
The investigation, called Boy Wasted, found that every month two people are crushed, torn to pieces or burned alive in this sector, and this has been happening continuously for the past 10 years.
McCleary said there was a need for a level playing field for the UK plastics recycling industry. “I don’t like the closure of factories, it’s jobs and people’s lives,” he said. “Basically, I believe that you yourself should take responsibility for our waste. It's just common sense as a person. I don't want my trash to end up in Malaysia. I don't want to wonder if there's a boy whose life was wasted because I threw something in the bin outside my house.
“There are boundaries that we, as a civilized society, should not cross – this is unacceptable.”
McLeary said the loophole, which made it cheaper for companies to export plastic rather than store it in the UK, needed to be closed. “We are asking for a level playing field. We don't want the market to be biased towards us. We and others have been pointing this out for years. However, today we are in a perfect storm and factories are closing.”
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He greeted UK plastic packaging taxwhich is being imposed on manufacturers who do not include at least 30% recycled plastic in their products as a way to stimulate demand for the use of our own UK plastic waste supplies. But he wants it to be more ambitious by 2030, requiring products to have a minimum recycled content of up to 50% to encourage manufacturers to include more of it in their products and reduce their use of virgin plastic.
Creating a UK plastic recycling industry that would see plastic waste disposed of by householders domestically could potentially become a £2bn industry, employing 2,000 people directly and 3,000 indirectly, and would restore public confidence in recycling, McLeary said.
“People in the UK need to care about where their plastic goes,” he added. “If they think they are recycling, they need to know that it is recycling and know that recycling is being done in a responsible manner.”
Viridor has closed three plastic recycling plants in the past three years; in Avonmouth, Skelmersdale and this year a sorting plant in Rochester.
An industry source said it was important that policymakers began to view waste as critical infrastructure. “If we were to stop exporting plastic waste and reach our increased municipal waste recycling target of 65% by 2035, we would need to build 400 new plants across the UK – 20 of these would be sorting plants and 20 would be recycling plants, turning the material back into products,” the source said.
“This is a key area of growth and has carbon benefits by preventing plastic from being burned and used in waste energy. But the risk now is that we are exporting materials, investment and jobs to other countries.”
The government has said it is committed to cleaning up the country and tackling plastic waste. “For too long, plastic waste has littered our streets, polluted the UK’s waterways and threatened our wildlife,” the spokesman said. “Our packaging reforms will collectively deliver £10 billion of investment in new sorting and recycling facilities, and the implementation of a deposit return scheme will ensure more plastic is recycled rather than thrown away as waste or left to rot in landfill.”
