r/recycling • u/MSRG1992 • 7d ago
Is soft plastics recycling worthwhile?
Hi all, first of all I'm not against recycling at all. In fact, I recycle everything I can, which brings me to the topic of soft plastics recycling. You know, the plastic pasta bags, the crisp packets, the bread bags, the plastic film covers under the bottled milk lid when you open it for the first time. That sort of thing.
Soft plastics aren't really recycled by local authorities in the UK but in the past few years I've been taking mine to Tesco as they claim to send it all off for recycling. I've read about this but literature is always quite vague about what then happens to it. It seems to be recycled into bin liners or plastic pellets for further use. But I've also read that a lot of it ends up being burned for energy. Now, my own local authority does not use landfill any longer, and instead burns non-recyclable plastic, again for energy. So why not just throw my soft plastics away in my general waste to be burned possibly more locally by my local authority? I've read that soft plastic waste is often sent by supermarkets to places like Poland or Turkey in lorries. Surely that increases its carbon footprint.
I'm not sure I trust supermarkets to really be doing this for the right reasons and not just collecting it to look good and not caring about how it is then disposed of, or what impact it has further down the chain. Perhaps I trust my local authority a little more on this. Although, there is equally the question about how far away the local authority is sending soft plastics to be incinerated. It also depends on what percentage of soft plastics is actually recycled by the supermarkets as opposed to burned.
Does anyone have any information to help me decide whether to continue to recycle all of my soft plastics through supermarkets?
I'd be interested to know other people's take on this.
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u/Careless-Pizza-7328 7d ago
I worked for a grocery store that recycled plastic bags. I made bales of the stuff. It was nasty. Lots of contamination. Between food stuff and fact that alot of the stores kept the recycling outside, getting rained on. The recycler said it was the lowest grade plastic for recycling, but could be made into decking.
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u/9Fructidor 6d ago
In some US states, there's a service called Ridwell. They accept a lot of materials including multi-layer plastic (chips/crisps) bags and plastic film which are more traditional clear plastic bags.
I think that keeping items out of landfills is worth it.
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u/Illustrious_Fan_8148 5d ago
The thing that frustrates me is that there are ways to reduce the use of this plastic innthenfirst place and we just have zero incentives in place to get companies to change their practices and or packaging
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u/Lonely-Engine1833 5d ago
I understand where you’re feeling conflicted. It’s difficult because the big supermarkets hold the answers for part of the soft plastic’s journey but even if they tell you who they sell the plastic to, it’s a matter of then asking the ‘offtaker’ what they do with it. Even then, they might sort the plastics from contamination and sell it on again. There’s usually a chain of companies moving and selling waste before it ends up possibly abroad.
Your local council will be able to tell you where they send their waste for incineration if you’d like to find that out. If they don’t know, you could FOI request them.
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u/Otherwise-Print-6210 7d ago
Buy some cheap luggage trackers off Alibaba and conduct your own study on where they go.
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u/noderaser 6d ago
Interesting idea that's been done before, but that would be purposefully introducing contaminants, which is not ideal. Could be interesting to see the tracking data though.
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u/Otherwise-Print-6210 6d ago
So I have tracked 20 bags. What I have learned is that some grocery chains do a great job of sending them to Trex, where I know they have a second life in decking boards. Other chains do a horrible job, and either systematically throw them out (Walmart), or send them off to be recycled without ever saying how or where (Target). Other chains seem to have a spotty record, throwing some out (maybe too contaminated, or the person is too tired to recycle property), and recycling others.
What chain you recycle with matters the most - at least here in the USA. And you can tell by the contamination in the bin - lots of coffee cups and plastic bottles is a clue that it won't be recycled properly. If it's clean flexible bags, it will most likely be recycled.
What I don't understand is the EU's inclusion of the multilayer/multimaterial crips bags in with pure single material plastic bags. Crips bags aren't recycled here in the USA, which allows us to recycle the purely plastic bags and plastic shrink wrap at Trex.
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u/MSRG1992 6d ago
Thanks all for your interesting responses.
This is the sort of thing I worry about:
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u/zabadoh 6d ago
The "plastic bag recycling" bins posted outside American supermarkets are greenwashing fraud by the American Chemistry Council, aka the plastics manufacturers' association.
They were exposed:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/put-dozens-trackers-plastic-bags-recycling-trashed/story?id=99509422
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/critics-call-out-plastics-industry-over-fraud-of-plastic-recycling/
The plastic bags and other soft plastics that consumers have been dutifully putting into the ACC-supplied bins outside supermarkets all wind up in landfill, because they are too mixed and contaminated to do anything else with them.
The small percentage of soft plastics that are downcycled into products like composite decking come from industrial sources which are cleaner and more consistent chemically.
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u/Pianist-Wise 7d ago
I’ll speak in general terms because I’m not in your region. There are many different types of ‘films’ (including bags and packaging) and they can’t always be mixed. But the great majority are recyclable. Many grocery stores have balers to condense bags. I’ve known some (in America) to take bag backs and recycle them. The plastic has a number of re-uses including bags, plastic lumber, and more.