Encouraging insights released from flexible plastic recycling pilots

The Flexible Plastic Fund (FPF) FlexCollect project has released an interim report showcasing the early insights from the seven local authorities currently running flexible plastic kerbside collection pilots, covering nearly 30,000 households from across the UK.

Authored by SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, this report provides encouraging insights at the project’s half-way stage. It will help local authorities, packaging producers, the plastic industry, policymakers and the waste and resource management industry, prepare for UK-wide collections in just over three years.

In March 2027, kerbside collection of flexible plastic packaging for recycling will be mandatory in England under revised EPR regulations and the Simpler Recycling reforms, and similar proposals have been made for the Devolved Administrations.

Discover some of the key findings from the report below.

Successful addition to existing collection services

Across all pilots, flexible plastic packaging collections have been added successfully into existing collection services. Whilst flexible plastic packaging is voluminous, the collection bags supplied to householders contain the material, keep it clean and withstand significant compaction. Furthermore, collection vehicles have enough capacity for the flexible plastic alongside the other recyclable materials they already collect.

Householders like the service and are using it

Householder surveys carried out in some of the pilot areas have found that the service is popular with householders. The average weight presented per collection bag per household across all pilots is 291g. Participation monitoring indicates 60% of households participate regularly and the data collected so far suggests participation is higher for weekly collections (64%) than fortnightly collections (47%). Levels of satisfaction amongst participating households exceed 89% and are as high as 96%.

Coloured bags are effective

The coloured collection bags supplied to householders have proved effective, promoting the collection of quality material and aiding separation of collected flexible plastics from other recyclable materials. Further data is required to determine how effective and efficient this system is on a larger scale.

Collected flexible plastic is very good quality

Based on data from five compositional analyses, the quality of materials collected is good – 90% is recyclable. Collected material is largely target flexible plastic packaging (82%) which is predominantly clean. Another 6% comprises the collection bags, 2% is non-target recyclables and the remaining 10% is non-target non-recyclable materials.