New industry group, Black Plastic Packaging Recycling Forum, has been established to tackle the challenge of recycling black plastic packaging. Led by the charity RECOUP, the group has agreed to new commitments that will enable this plastic to be recycled into a raw material source, with the outcome of less waste and improved resource efficiency. The group is made up of members from packaging manufacturers, packers, brands and retailers to material reprocessors, trade associations and individual specialists. Collaborating with Recoup, the forum has produced a Black Plastic Packaging Recycling Roadmap to assess three objectives: Roll out the use of tried and tested detectable pigment Create business models and technology solutions for existing black plastic materials Assess and implement a change to an alternative colour. The two organisations believe that meeting these actions will provide the collection, sorting and recycling of the black plastic packaging and develop sustainable solutions. Recoup chief executive Stuart Foster said: “Despite the inevitable politics and positioning behind issues such as black plastic recycling, our role at RECOUP is to bring the various groups and stakeholders together to make practical steps forward and build on the great work of individual organisations to date. The ultimate aim is to drive black plastic recycling forwards in a practical and sensible way, turning ambitions and collaborative thinking into actual delivery.”
New UK cross-industry group The Black Plastic Packaging Recycling Forum, which groups manufacturers, packers, brands, retailers, reprocessors, trade associations, and non-profit organisation RECOUP, has come up with recycling roadmap with the aim of recycling more black plastic in the UK. Black plastic is hard to recycle because it is coloured using carbon black pigment, which absorbs infra-red light. This means that the packs are not detected, and hence not sorted, by optical sorting systems using the near infra-red (NIR) detection used widely in sorting facilities.