Recoup’s plea – don’t slow us down!

The role of RECOUP is to lead and inform the continued development of plastics recycling that is sustainable and protects resources. With support across all parts of the producer and recycling chain, it puts RECOUP in an ideal position to encourage genuine practical collaboration and knowledge transfer to achieve plastics circular economy success. In this role as plastic value chain co-ordinators, it is more important than ever to acknowledge the key issues and challenge current thinking.

Stuart Foster, CEO, at RECOUP, comments “there is more focus on plastic and sustainability than ever before, and we are looking to match that with action and progress. I have growing concerns that politics and positioning (and the time and resources it absorbs) from a growing number of associations, companies and NGO’s, is creating a wave of green rhetoric and media attention, but slowing delivery of effective programmes that would move us forward. We will continue to engage with the whole of the plastics supply chain with these issues and we are keen to keep the debate alive to advance plastics recycling and resource efficiency.”

RECOUP, to assist with cross sector collaboration, will be bringing together the whole of the plastics recycling supply chain in their annual Conference.   The event does not shy away from tackling the difficult questions that are likely to affect the future of plastics recycling.

Dr Helene Roberts, Group Marketing and Innovations Director, LINPAC, (RECOUP members) in support of the collaborative approach commented; “today, individual business can do much to innovate their products and services to make recycling easier and promote packaging as a valuable resource.  LINPAC has long been an advocate of increasing the resource efficiency and recyclability potential of plastic packaging to support a closed-loop recycling chain and ultimately, a circular economy.

A joined-up approach, in which we see collaboration between business, industry, local government and education of the consumer, is now key to growing a deeper understanding of plastics recycling sector challenges. To make a circular economy a reality in the future, every link in the chain needs to be committed to coming together to make a meaningful change and develop end markets for recycled materials.”

The plastic sector has long engaged with the circular economy debate and this is an aspiration of the industry with part of the supply chain looking at how they can work together to bring about change and opportunities for advancement.  The ocean plastics debate has traditionally been another story.   The media attention has made it the ‘elephant in the room’ of plastic material management but the challenge is how to engage in a positive way and have a rounded debate and understanding of all the issues.

Commenting further Paul Vanston, CEO of INCPEN, questions whether in the light of that media attention, “Ocean plastics, recyclability, recycled content, polymer rationalisation, composites, collection & capture – a multitude of issues that, when put together, are seriously challenging our whole value chain to arrive at collaborative answers.

Regulatory frameworks in the UK and Europe are set to change.  Uncertainty is rife for us all, so how do we move forward together?”

There is a willingness within the industry to move forward and up the pace of collaborative working and challenging thinking.

Further details of the RECOUP Conference 2017 can be found at www.recoup.org/Conference-2017.

Headline sponsors for this year’s Conference are RPC bpi recycled products, with standard sponsorship from Suez, Aura Soma, Eurokey, Tomra Sorting, and MCS Corporate.