Flexible plastic packaging has many advantages: it is durable, strong, hygienic and lightweight, which makes it ideal for packing, transporting, displaying and storing all types of food and other products as it protects these products from harm and reduces food waste, thereby reducing carbon emissions.

But recycling flexible plastics after use is challenging for a number of reasons; first and foremost, flexible plastics are lightweight and bulky, making them difficult to dispose of. Although the industry has made great strides in moving towards single material packaging, it is still a mixture of polymers (mainly polyethylene and polypropylene) which makes recycling more difficult. This means that recycling requires more effort and ingenuity, which in turn affects the economics and means that recycling is expensive. It is therefore not surprising that although plastic packaging accounts for 25% of all consumer packaging in the UK, only 8% is recycled.

Given the clear disadvantage of recycling this material, should we even bother? What is the solution to recycling soft plastics?

In the face of this problem, major players in the industry, including manufacturers and brands, have stepped forward to create the Soft Plastics Fund (FPF) to put a value on soft plastics so that they can be recycled wisely.The FPF is collectively working on how to recycle them. The FPF was launched in 2021. This unique stakeholder initiative is coordinated by Ecosurety, one of the UK's largest packaging compliance programs, which has been championing change in this area for many years.

The Fund currently has two initiatives: the FPF FlexCollect project, which is preparing the UK for the collection of flexible plastics directly from households through local authority kerbside collections, and the Retail Support Mechanism, which provides financial 'backing' per tonne of flexible plastic to help make recycling of flexible plastics from retailer collection points economically viable.

However, the economics of plastic packaging recycling are often challenged by the high cost of sorting and the low value of the material. What the industry needs most is a sensible, well-designed and well-functioning Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system for UK packaging, as well as clarity on the required collection system (i.e., a harmonized system) and payment options for EPR program administrators.

Under the proposed EPR legislation, it is expected that from March 2027, kerbside soft plastic collection will become mandatory across the UK. With collection continuing and the plastic packaging tax providing an incentive to include recycled content in packaged products, there could be a revolution in the recycling sector. Crucial in all of this, however, is whether the EPR levy will be used for infrastructure development. Or will it be incorporated into the general budgets of local authorities and used anywhere. This is an important missing piece of the jigsaw. Investment in infrastructure will only happen if it is economically viable, and it will only be viable if the money goes back into the recycling system.

The industry has less than four years to prepare, and EPR disbursements were supposed to begin in less than a year, but uncertainty, pushback and frustration abound due to constant government delays. Many steps are being taken by all parts of the industry, from retailers and packaging manufacturers to reprocessors and technology developers, but the main obstacle to any real progress is the continued delay in policy implementation and the resulting lack of confidence.

A year ago, with funding of around £3 million, the FPF FlexCollect project was launched to generate data and insights to inform industry and government ahead of the EPR and to support the implementation of the new packaging EPR regime and consistent collection reforms. The project has been a major focus for FPF, which is the main funder of the project, with the rest of the funding coming from the UK Department for the Environment, the UKTI Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge and the Zero Waste Scotland project.

The project will run until March 2025, with a consortium of Ecosurety, RECOUP, Suez UK Recycling and WRAP managing the project and delivering research findings that will help shape the future policy landscape. FPF Flex Collect has been set up with the aim of understanding how post-consumer plastic flexible packaging can be collected and recycled at scale from householders.

Three local authority pilots have been launched by Cheltenham Borough, South Gloucestershire and Muldoon District Councils. A further three pilots will be launched in 2023 and a further three in late 2023/early 2024. Initially, 5% of households within each local authority will have access to the collection service.

As the capacity of the UK infrastructure to handle flexible plastic packaging continues to grow, the range of reprocessors and the range of end markets, including the increase in recyclability options, will expand over time, which is one of the objectives of the project - to enable reprocessors to really get to grips with the material, to assess it and to find out what they need to do to prepare it for the large quantities of flexible packaging that will be collected in the future.

To date, investment in sorting and reprocessing capacity has been hampered by the fact that flexible plastic packaging is a challenging material that is perceived to be of little value. Continued uncertainty over the form and timing of proposed changes to the policy environment has also not been conducive to such perceptions - the delayed introduction of the Scottish DRS and the continued delay in responding to the consultation on consistent collection epitomizes this problem. How can the industry prepare for new regulations if there is no confidence in the actual timing of their introduction?

The only good news of late is that the government has finally listened to the industry's calls and will consult on allowing a mass balance approach to calculating the proportion of recycled content in chemically recycled plastics for the purposes of the plastic packaging levy.

The consultation is reportedly due to start later this year, but in reality it is already imminent as the introduction of this measure will provide a significant boost to the demand for flexible plastic film and hence its recycling.

In summary, it is crucial to understand how long it usually takes to purchase, manufacture, transport and construct or install new facilities or equipment. It is better to have this policy clarification sooner rather than later; otherwise there could be confusion during what will be a challenging transition period at the best of times. Defra and Ministers will need to work with the resource and waste industries to ensure that the policy environment and system design bring about the material vapors needed for a circular economy and that the transition comes in an orderly fashion.