Hahladakis, JN orcid.org/0000-0002-8776-6345, Purnell, P orcid.org/0000-0002-6099-3804, Iacovidou, E orcid.org/0000-0001-6841-0995 et al. (2 more authors) (2018) Post-consumer plastic packaging waste in England: Assessing the yield of multiple collection-recycling schemes. Waste Management, 75. pp. 149-159. ISSN 0956-053X
Abstract
The European Commission (EC) recently introduced a ‘Circular Economy Package’, setting ambitious recycling targets and identifying waste plastics as a priority sector where major improvements are necessary. Here, the authors explain how different collection modalities affect the quantity and quality of recycling, using recent empirical data on household (HH) post-consumer plastic packaging waste (PCPP) collected for recycling in the devolved administration of England over the quarterly period July-September 2014. Three main collection schemes, as currently implemented in England, were taken into account: (i) kerbside collection (KS), (ii) household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) (also known as ‘civic amenity sites’), and (iii) bring sites/banks (BSs). The results indicated that: (a) the contribution of KS collection scheme in recovering packaging plastics is higher than HWRCs and BBs, with respective percentages by weight (wt%) 90%, 9% and 1%; (b) alternate weekly collection (AWC) of plastic recyclables in wheeled bins, when collected commingled, demonstrated higher yield in KS collection; (c) only a small percentage (16%) of the total amount of post-consumer plastics collected in the examined period (141 kt) was finally sent to reprocessors (22 kt); (c) nearly a third of Local Authorities (LAs) reported insufficient or poor data; and (d) the most abundant fractions of plastics that finally reached the reprocessors were mixed plastic bottles and mixed plastics.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Crown Copyright © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Circular economy; Household waste; Local authorities; Plastic packaging; Recycling; Waste collection schemes |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds) > Institute for Resilient Infrastructure (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC NE/L014149/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Feb 2018 12:32 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:14 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.wasman.2018.02.009 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:127189 |