Is recycling ambitions pie in the sky?

Well,having just returned from the long Christmas/New Year break what awaits us in 2012?

I had the opportunity to visit a local MRF (materials recycling facility) just before Christmas as they were just about to gear up to one of their busiest times of years.  They were expecting a 1/3 increase (!) in their throughput over the holiday period and in the immediate weeks of the new year – perhaps a very poignant reminded of our ‘throwaway society’?

However, just before the holiday break, DEFRA published its packaging recycling targets for the 5 year period 2013 – 2017 which seemed to have been warmly received by the industry as ‘solid green ambition’ (perhaps at last).   On plastics packaging, DEFRA is looking to raise recycling targets from the current level of around 32% to around 57% by 2017 and with every tonne of recycled plastic roughly saving 1.5 metric tonnes of carbon, this not only translates into a requirement for reduced landfill, but also a very worthwhile saving in our carbon footprint.

Its perhaps frightening to think that recent forecasts suggest that by 2020, England will only have around 55 non-hazardous landfill sites operating across the country – a remarkable drop from the ~250 sites that are currently in operation.  However this, combined with our ‘green ambitions’ is yet further impetus to really develop the recycling industry and dramatically reduce the amount of material that we in the UK  send to landfill or export to the far east.

Centriforce Products will be playing its part in helping this.   We are already the UK’s largest independent recycler of plastics materials and we will shortly be announcing further investment to increase and improve our capabilities in our Liverpool  recycling and manufacturing site. We’ll be looking forward to telling you more about this shortly.

In the meantime, if you have a project that is looking for recycled materials in either sheet or profile form, then make Centriforce one of the first phone calls you make.

Just finished reading a rather lengthy report produced by McKinsey (title above).   It can be found on the main McKinsey site and is available for download.  Its a long report, but thankfully they break it down into ‘bite size’ chunks and there is a lot of repetition so its worth the time to take home for the read (or perhaps view on a Kindle should you have one and not want to waste paper!)

With the world’s population now around the ~6 billion mark, the report makes sobering reading. Some headlines which keep recurring are that:

• 3 billion more middle class consumers expected to be in the global economy by 2030
• 147% increase in real  commodity prices since the turn of the last century (yes in the last ~11 years alone)

Of course , we’re all now aware that the emerging BRIC economies are developing fast, leading to rapid and very significant uptakes in raw materials.  Plus, this new wealth in the developing economies of India and China creates an ever increasing indigenous demand for more and more resources.

So what’s this got to do with recycling plastics then?  As well as being some useful macro-economic pointers as to the way the world is likely to develop, its a useful reminder that it is necessary to make the best use of what we have already…therefore that often used mantra of,  reduce, reuse, recycle once again comes to the fore.

Its clear with what we see immediately around us that we must make best use of our existing resources and of course that includes recycling materials that can be used again and of course the efficient use of energy to make the materials in the first place. Often this gets captured in carbon foot-printing, but the utilisation of recycled materials can be 10x more efficient that the use of virgin materials.  Its also clear from this report that we’re going to see ever increasing prices for commodities whether its materials or energy and hence there is clearly a strong economic argument for recycling plastics (and other materials of course).

Simples…!