In February, the retailer announced plans to launch a film recycling system as part of its sustainability commitment. Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire or Dstl Portsdown West, Fareham, Hampshire, 30,000 starting salary, rising to 35,000 over 2 years. Tagged Flexible Plastic Recycling, packaging, plastic, Sainsburys, Climate Change / Legislation / Local Authority, Circular is the sustainability media brand brought to you by CIWM, CIWM empowers professionalism across the resources sector, Got a story for us? Speaking in front of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, Jacob Hayler, executive director of the Environmental Services Association (ESA) said firms do not have to pre-notify the EA about where they are exporting waste making it very challenging for them to be able to regulate that appropriately. Eurokey repeated its comment that the packaging export recovery notes it claimed, which act as proof that material has been properly recycled, "were claimed based on an approved recovery rate and to facilities that were approved by the EA". The front of store recycling points will allow customers to dispose of soft packaging such as crisp packets, food pouches, salad bags and biscuit and cake wrappers for recycling. A Tesco spokesperson said: There are many challenges associated with recycling soft plastic materials and it is precisely because soft plastics are hard to recycle and are not recycled by the vast majority of councils in the UK, that we introduced our soft plastic recycling points at our stores to prevent it otherwise going to landfill.. So, the FPF only really adds environmental value if it's in the context of an overall plastics reduction strategy. After sorting the material, Eurokey says it either sells the graded material directly to processors for use in recycled products or it works with partners across Europe for further processing into plastic pellets which can be sold for use in a range of products. Sainsburys has also been announced as the principal supermarket partner for the United Nations international climate change conference, COP26, which takes place this November in Glasgow. We need a fundamental shake up, the amount of plastic on their shelves drastically reduced and innovative reuse models introduced that allow packaging to stay out of the environment, and in a loop where it is used, washed and refilled again, said Schrank. Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. He said there was also a lack of transparency about where some of the plastic waste was ending up. The packaging recycling scheme enables consumers to deposit items such as used crisp packets, food pouches, salad bags and biscuit and cake wrappers in bins based within Sainsburys stores. We use cookies to give you the best experience and to learn about your use of our site for advertising and analytics purposes. Our address is: letsrecycle.com, It cited a report from waste prevention charity Wrap, which estimated flexible film contributed towards 290,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste in 2019. However, an investigation by ENDS earlier this month revealed that the company contracted by to recycle the material for both Sainsburys and Tesco is locked in a legal dispute with authorities in Poland, and is unwilling to provide details about the ultimate fate of the material. This website uses cookies to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. The scheme could become a licence for us and for the big brands to go on using more and more plastic packaging, reassuring ourselves that 'it's okay, it'll be recycled'. Does the CMAs Veolia/Suez stance conflict with the pace of change? A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Friday. However, Eurokey has refused to provide ENDS with any detail on where the material goes, or the tonneages involved, prompting the Environment Agency (EA) to urge businesses to ensure they carry out sufficient duty of care checks. I have a very comical photo of the staff stating bewildered at the notice. The scheme enabled customers in the North East of England to recycle polypropylene (PP) film, which is found on many popular supermarket items but is not recycled at kerbside by most local authorities in England. However, it said it took any allegations that suggest the waste it sends for recycling is going to landfill very seriously and that it was therefore undertaking its own audit of the supplier. They had absolutely no clue, even though there was a sign in front of their noses saying that they were part of the scheme. According to the retailer, the expanded initiative has the potential to significantly decrease the amount of plastic packaging going to landfill. Conor McGlone investigates, Get more great articles like this straight to your inbox. Eurokey says it aims to enable closed looped systems where waste produce can be recycled and placed back in the market where it originated. The Sainsburys store at Forestside in Belfast is listed as having this facility but I couldnt find it, nor did the member of staff I asked about it know anything about it, so I ended up taking my bag of plastic to a nearby Tesco store. Separate research from the Flexible Packaging Consortiumrevealed that some 215 billion pieces of flexible plastic packaging are placed on the UK market every year and that almost all of this material is sent to landfill or incineration. The expanded initiative has the potential to significantly decrease the amount of plastic packaging going to landfill, with a report from WRAP estimating that flexible film contributed towards 290,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste in 2019. The list of flexible plastic film accepted in Sainsburys stores as part of the packaging recycling scheme is listed below. Although flexible plastic represents a fifth of all UK citizen plastic packaging, only 6% is collected for recycling currently. We try to reduce our reliance on single-use plastics but still, there they are, in my bin. Eventually they found the collection bin,which was far too small to take my bags. Aldi supermarket has also begun a trial to roll out soft plastic collection points in select stores in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story). Contact the Circular team, Advertising with Circular can help you reach your audience. Eurokey then collects this waste from Sainsburys and Tesco and ships it to a plant in Poland, where it is sorted before being sent for reprocessing elsewhere. When approached by ENDS, Sainsburys declined to provide details of the tonneages involved and where the material - which is often highly contaminated - was likely to end up. While there are requirements that the material should then be recycled to an equivalent standard to the UK, it is very difficult to check, he added. But Turkey can't cope. The initiative is being championed by resources charity WRAP. As for me, I decided to celebrate the launch of the scheme by clearing out my hoard of plastic bags which built up over lockdown, as shown on this page. None of the flexible plastic waste that Sainsburys collects from its customers as part of a controversial nationwide initiative is currently recycled in the UK, the supermarket has admitted. One of these items made it to an industrial zone nearAdana in Southeast Turkey just miles from where activists and journalists in Adanahave previously found Tesco-branded wrappers at illegal dump sites. Home / News / Circular Economy / Sainsburys rolls out largest flexible plastic packaging recycling system, Circular Economy, Environment and Energy, Resource Management, Sustainability. Cookie information is temporarily stored in your browser and helps our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Green Chancellors and nature spending tests: What would net-zero and climate policy look like under Labour? Claire Hughes, director of product & innovation at Sainsburys, commented:Making recycling easier for our customers is a key part of our strategy to minimise the impact of single-use plastics on the environment, alongside our own ambitious target of reducing the use of plastics in our own operations by 50% by 2025.. London SE1 0AX, Environment Media Group Ltd 2022. British supermarket chain Sainsburys has introduced its flexible plastic recycling system at 520 more of its supermarkets following a successful trial. The ultimate goal of the fund is to create a fully circular recycling model, in which all plastic wrapping put on the market is collected and recycled into more flexible plastic, eliminating waste. Sainsburys made a big announcement but their staff dont know about it, the collection provision is very poor and there is no public information in store. Eurokey is in the process of appealing an administrative proceeding from the local Environmental Protection Agency regarding the order to remove waste from sites not intended for their storage. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. These notes guarantee that an equivalent amount of packaging has been recycled. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is registered as a Charity in England & Wales (no 211014) and Scotland (no SC038698). They want all those things that have previously been lurking unloved in my bin, even coffee bags, food pouches, biscuit wrappers and crisp packets. Jacob Hayler - EFRA Committee session on plastic waste.mp4, Veolia thanks St Albans' residents - March 2022, March 2022 Interview with David Palmer-Jones who is leaving Suez, Interview with Carole Taylor, past Chair of LARAC, How the Commonwealth Games can inspire sustainable large-scale events. Tonight I took 4 large bags of carefully collected flexible packaging waste to Sainsburys in Lee Green. Crucially, the fund is designed to stimulate recycling right here in the UK. https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/news/latest-news/2021/24-06-2021-sainsburys-rolls-out-largest-flexible-plastic-packaging-recycling-system. Sainsburys announced last week that following a trial in the north east of England, it was rolling out its flexible packaging trial to a total of 520 supermarkets across the UK. They always say NO until I persuade them otherwise and they have to ring for other staff. The UK does not currently have the capacity to recycle this type of plastic, so customers are encouraged to take their flexible plastic waste back to supermarkets. Available to watch on-demand: edies Climate Finance Week online events, Tesco removes plastic wrapping from soft drinks multipacks, Tesco ends trials of refillable products through TerraCycles Loop platform. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies -, louise.tennekoon@bishopsstortfordindependent.co.uk. I am more sceptical when it comes to the big brands involved in the fund. In an ideal world we would be feasting on garden-grown veg, homemade pittas, weekly batches of home-baked biscuits and my kids wouldn't eat crisps. Some of it seems unavoidable (frozen veg and Quorn packs), but some of it I can definitely cut down on. Supermarket chain Sainsburys has rolled out its flexible plastic recycling scheme to 520 stores nationwide. Hard-to-recycle flexible plastic packaging such as film is not currently collected by most councils in the UK, with just 6% of it recycled, despite it comprising a fifth of all plastic packaging put on the market. Greenpeace says that most of the soft plastic collected at soft plastic collection points won't and cant be recycled, and that supermarkets need to come clean about this. High-Quality Dosing and Packaging Solutions for the Dairy Industry, Indias Largest Multinational Flexible Packaging Materials and Solution Company, Thank you for subscribing to Packaging Gateway, The leading site for news and procurement in the packaging industry, Receive our newsletter - data, insights and analysis delivered to you. Since these pouches appear to be the majority packaging, this is irresponsible. The packaging industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every month. There was no incentive for recyclers to develop the infrastructure to handle them and no point in collecting them for recycling, which is why they ended up in landfill or in the environment. I left the bags on the flour next to it and 10 min later they had vanished, probably dumped in the general waste bin. Flexible plastic comprises of a fifth of all UK citizen plastic packaging, but only 6% is currently collected for recycling. Making recycling easier for our customers is a key part of our strategy to minimise the impact of single-use plastics on the environment, alongside our own ambitious target of reducing the use of plastics in our own operations by 50% by 2025.. No other reproduction or distribution is permitted without prior written consent. There is one danger with this, and it's a big one. For the initial trial, Sainsburys partnered with Leicestershire-based Eurokey Recycling, which will mechanically recycle all polyethylene (PE) and PP film from Sainsburys front of store collections from customers and back of store operations. They have taken some baby steps to reduce packaging on some product lines, but it's small beer so far. Currently, just 17% of UK local authorities collect the problem material for recycling. Since China banned imports of plastic waste in 2017, most of our plastic recycling ends up in Turkey (over 200,000 tonnes of the stuff last year and this year's figures look set to be even higher). Tesco said the soft plastic collected in its stores was currently being recycled into bin liners at a recycling facility in Derbyshire but Nina Schrank, senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said supermarkets were still producing far too much plastic. Reducing food waste in the hospitality sector. They all rank among the top 10 worst plastic polluters globally, with PepsiCo alone generating a staggering 2.3 million tonnes of plastic waste a year. So I was excited to see that Sainsbury's has launched a new recycling scheme for flexible plastic packaging in 520 of its stores (including here in Bishop's Stortford). Company registration number 03959158. Claire Hughes, Director of Product and Innovation at Sainsburys, said:Were really excited to announce the mass rollout of the Flexible Plastics Recycling scheme in over 520 of our stores, helping our customers to recycle more of their plastic packaging, instead of it ending up as waste. Faversham House Ltd 2022 edie news articles may be copied or forwarded for individual use only. Meanwhile, the UKs largest supermarket chain, Tesco, has announced it is carrying out an audit of the waste exporter employed by both supermarkets to recycle this plastic waste - following an E&T investigation. 2022 The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Other supermarkets, including Tesco, Aldi and Coop, are trialing similar schemes. If you open up my black bin, you'll discover my secret eco-shame: plastic food packaging. WRAP estimates that flexible film accounted for 290,000t of plastic packaging waste in 2019. Most local authorities do no currently accept this material in curbside collections. Truss v Sunak: Who is best placed to lead the country on climate and net-zero? Strictly Necessary Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings and you can move around the website and use its features. The supermarket chain said the items should be clean and free from food and with sticky labels removed as much as possible. You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings. Historically, the price of PRNs for flexible plastics was low because they were hard to recycle and there wasn't much of a market for them. Sainsburys really need to sort this mess out! The move comes after the retailer completed a successful trial, which started in the north-east of England in February. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Sainsburys Product and Innovation director Claire Hughes said: Were really excited to announce the mass rollout of the Flexible Plastics Recycling scheme in more than 520 of our stores, helping our customers to recycle more of their plastic packaging instead of having it end up as waste. Almost 300 tonnes of plastic waste has been removed by working with Prevented Ocean Plastic to repurpose ocean plastics waste into packaging. The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Most employees at Bishop Auckland are not aware you do this type of recycling in-house. Making recycling easier for our customers is a key part of our strategy to minimise the impact of single-use plastics on the environment, alongside our own ambitious target of halving the use of plastics in our own operations by 2025.. Our government is under pressure to ban the export of all plastic waste, but at the moment we lack the recycling infrastructure to handle it in the UK. 115 Southwark Bridge Road
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