Making Plastic Bottle

Recycling Work For You

Stuart Foster
Project Manager
• Current Bottle Recycling Activity
• Collection System Options
• Increasing yield and scheme efficiency
• Handling
• Markets
• Beyond Plastic Bottles
• Key Messages and Opportunities
Which bottles are being recycled by householders ?

All bottles are recyclable and should be collected

in recycling schemes. This message needs to be
given to householders
Bring Schemes Can Work

• Container Capacity

• Quantity vs Quality

• Cost

• Works together with

traditional kerbside
Case Study : Chesterfield
• 24 bring sites for plastic bottles

• 1100 litre or 1280 litre bins

• 252 tonnes collected for recycling.

• 10.5 tonnes of material per bank

• Overflow issues

• Residents asked to rinse and squash material

• Material collected and sorted by the recycling

charity Sheffield Reclaim
Scheme Evolution
How can you get here? Successful
Wider integrated
recycling systems
Good take-up
First practice
integrated accepted
Established systems
Systems

Improved
Sorting
Kerbside
Systems Sorting
facilities Pilot
bring
No plastic
schemes
recycling facilities
Key Systems For Kerbside Collection

HIGH
COSTS
• Basic “refuse only”
Low
participation • Non-integrated “add on recyclables (kerbside and / or
Low recycling
rates bring bank) ”
• Partially integrated “recyclables collection, reducing
the costs of residual waste management”
• Fully integrated “same day collection of recyclables
and residual refuse using split body vehicles”
LOW
COSTS • Fully integrated “alternate weekly collections of
High
participation
recyclables and residual refuse”
High recycling
rates
Kerbside : Options and Opportunities

• Container type, collection frequency,

relation to refuse collection, scheme
promotion/incentives, range of recyclable
materials collected all affect performance

• Reported participation ranges from 14 -

100%

• Performance ranges from 2kg of plastic

bottles per household per annum to over
20kg per household per annum
Boosting Recycling Rates
25

20
% recycling rate

15

10

0
no plastic with plastic

Recovery rates for other materials increase when

plastic bottles are added to a recycling system
Case Study : Bracknell Forest

• Original kerbside scheme introduced 10 years ago

• Needed collection schemes improvements to meet

legislative targets and satisfy householder demand

• Added plastic bottles to their recycling service

• Incorporated alternate weekly collections

• Integrated waste and recycling service

• New scheme configuration and continued communication activites makes a

performance level of 10kg/hh/yr of plastic bottles a reality for Bracknell Forest in
2007.
Vehicle Capacity

• Plastic bottles take up about 10% of the capacity in refuse

collection vehicles

• You are already paying to collect plastic bottles from households and
transport them to landfills around the UK
Scheme Efficiency
It is possible to decrease the cost of residual waste management
through:

• Rearranging collection routes

• Undertaking fewer trips to landfill
• Decreasing the number of
vehicles used for refuse collection

• 30,000 households
• Save 5% volume capacity
(50% of bottles removed)
• 20 rounds equates 1 vehicle saving
 Newport
• Retrospectively added plastic bottles
• No opportunity to redesign the scheme
• Reconfiguration of vehicles
• Good performing kerbside yielding a high
quality of material
• Fortnightly refuse collections has further
boosted bottle recovery levels.
Vale Royal
• Fortnightly kerbside sort system in
place for dry recyclables
• No opportunity for vehicle redesign
• Trials of plastic bottle collections
using boxes and bins
• Rolled out fortnightly separate
collection of bottles using 55 L box
• Initial data suggests 11kg/hh/yr
performance and increase in other
materials
Integration

Savings in residual waste collection can be diverted

to help with recyclables collections
Case Study : Test Valley Borough Council

• Introduced alternate weekly kerbside collections for dry recyclables and

compostables in 1997

• Paper, card, food and drink cans and plastic bottles were collected for
recycling with plastic bottles specifically included due to public demand

• Moved to alternate residual and dry recyclables collection in 2006

• High level of information provision

• Plastic bottle recycling collections

added little or no extra cost

• 85 tonnes per month of bottles recovered

Approaches to Integration
• Different issue of ‘MRFs or on-vehicle sorting’

e.g. Daventry & Lichfield (sort on vehicle)

Breckland, Exeter, Falkirk (sort at MRF)
Blackburn & Darwen (selected areas) -
combination of sort on vehicle and at MRF

• 1-pass vehicles if you want weekly refuse e.g. Milton

Keynes, Chester
• Avoid an expensive non-integrated scheme that’s hard
to change
Alternate Weekly Collections

• Considering AWC

• Current AWC activity and opinions

• Implementing AWC
Case Study : Waveney District Council

• Staged roll out over 18 months to 53,000 hh

• Residual waste collected fortnightly, recyclables and garden waste

collected on the alternate weeks.

• Inclusion of plastic considered essential to reduce residual waste

volume.

• Reported bottle recovery of 10.29kg per household per year

“we believe that including plastic has increased the volume of other
materials collected. In terms of costs, including plastics has not
directly increased scheme costs but has significantly reduced the
volume of residual waste. By far the biggest benefit has been
householder satisfaction”.
Considerations For Mixed Plastics
10% of UK authorities actively accept ‘other’ plastics

• Operational requirements

• Economics

• Communication / quality

• Possible,

as long as a sustainable market with a positive sales value is identified

• Could the effort and cost be better used to increase bottle collection ?

• Due diligence is essential

Handling
Maximising Income

• Know what you’ve got and understand the market

• Quality

• Bale density

• Plan loading

• Check contract options

& their benefits
Underweight, unstable bales Poor quality sorting
Market Information Sources
Plastic bottle prices over the past 2 years

Recoup Services Ltd

Data source: www.letsrecycle.com

150

100

£/tonne
50

0
Oct-04 Apr-05 Oct-05 Apr-06 Oct-06
Month

Clear and light blue PET Coloured PET HDPE single col HDPE mixed col Mixed Average £ per PRN/one tonne of plastic
Handling Options Assessment
Item Cost (£)
RORO collection Loading Shovel X
Infeed Hopper X
1 2
Moving Plate X
RORO RORO
Container Container
Bottle Piercer (1) X
4x4m Can Flattener (2) X
feed
18m hopper Feed Conveyor X
4x10 input storage
Output Conveyor X

Loade Input Storage Bay X

r

20m
Infeed material

Total Capital Cost : £60,000

Operational Cost /Year : £59,000

Throughput Per Year : 500 te plastic bottles

125 te cans
Bottle Sorting and MRF’s

1 tonne + / hr

60kg/person/hr

Economies of scale can be achieved through

compatible schemes
Benefits
• Easily separated from the waste stream
• Meets householder demand
• Plastic bottles have a value
• Reduces the cost of residual waste
• Reduces landfill requirement
• Benefits the environment
• Fits with waste strategy criteria
• Contributes to targets
• Handling facilities and markets exist
• End market demand
The Challenges
• Ensure all types of plastic bottles are put in the
recycling container
• Bring scheme performance above 2kg/hh/year
• Kerbside performance above 10kg/hh/yr
• Review collection of refuse and recyclables
• Check handling activity for good practice and
efficiency
• Take advantage of the support and information
available
• Help meet market demand for plastic bottles
• If all UK households achieved 10kg / hh / yr
of bottle collection, 250,000te would be recovered
 www.recoup.org enquiry@recoup.org

• High potential, high value material stream

• Need to boost collection levels from existing

schemes

• Target 10 kg/hh/yr
Achieving 10 ? Then … Target ANOTHER 10 !

• Learn from success and experience

Thank you for listening