BPF responds to report highlighting exported waste being illegally dumped and burned

In response to findings in a recent report about plastic waste that has been exported for recycling being illegally dumped and burned in Turkey, the British Plastics Federation (BPF) issued the following response:

The plastics industry supports introducing robust measures to prevent fraud and enforcing existing regulations to ensure that exported plastic waste is handled in an environmentally sound manner.

The industry has been calling for years for the UK to reduce its reliance on exporting plastic waste for recycling and the British Plastics Federation’s (BPF) Recycling Roadmap shows how the UK can more than halve the amount of plastic waste it exports by 2030.

To achieve this, the UK needs to continue to invest in its recycling infrastructure and we hope proposed reforms to Extended Producer Responsibility requirements will help generate much-needed revenue. The BPF has also called for income raised from the upcoming Plastic Packaging Tax to be invested in expanding the UK’s recycling capacity.

With the right drivers in place, including standardising kerbside collections across the UK and collecting all commonly used plastics for recycling, the UK could become a world-leader in plastics recycling and reduce the amount of plastic going to landfill to 1%.