Giant plastics plant to tackle recycling blackspot

Recycling firm WES Greenstar has today announced plans to bolster its capacity for recycling mixed household plastics such as margarine tubs, yoghurt pots and meat trays after securing £1.2m in funding from government-backed recycling agency WRAP.

The company said it will build a new facility at its Redcar site, creating 20 new jobs and increasing its capacity for processing household plastic waste by 20,000 tonnes a year by 2013.

"Our new mixed plastics plant will be able to process natural and mixed colour polypropylene, PE and PET in addition to PVC and PS, all sourced from domestic recycling collections," said James Donaldson, founder and managing director of Greenstar WES, adding that the resulting plastics would be sold to customers for use in higher-value industrial applications.

Although more than 216,000 tonnes of plastic bottles are collected for recycling in the UK, the recycling of non-bottle household plastic packaging is still limited.

Research from WRAP last year demonstrated that it was commercially and technically viable to recycle and reprocess non-bottle household plastic packaging, and the agency is now lobbying other local authority areas to emulate the WES facility.

"Mixed plastic packaging is an extremely visible waste stream, and householders increasingly want it to be recycled in the same way as other packaging materials such as glass, paper, plastic bottles and cans, which are widely recycled," said Marcus Gover, director for market development at WRAP. " It has a value as a recycled material and it does not make economic or environmental sense to dispose of it in landfill. We're looking forward to the extra domestic capacity WES Greenstar will add with this new facility."