The Flexible Plastic Fund (FPF) FlexCollect project has released an interim report showcasing the early insights from the seven local authorities currently running flexible plastic curbside collection pilots, covering nearly 30,000 households from across the UK.

Authored by SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, this report provides encouraging insights at the project’s half-way stage. It will help local authorities, packaging producers, the plastic industry, policymakers and the waste and resource management industry, prepare for UK-wide collections in just over three years.

In March 2027, curbside collection of flexible plastic packaging for recycling will be mandatory in England under revised EPR regulations and the Simpler Recycling reforms, and similar proposals have been made for the Devolved Administrations.

Discover some of the key findings from the report below.

Successful addition to existing collection services

Across all pilots, flexible plastic packaging collections have been added successfully into existing collection services. Whilst flexible plastic packaging is voluminous, the collection bags supplied to householders contain the material, keep it clean and withstand significant compaction. Furthermore, collection vehicles have enough capacity for the flexible plastic alongside the other recyclable materials they already collect.

Householders like the service and are using it

Householder surveys carried out in some of the pilot areas have found that the service is popular with householders. The average weight presented per collection bag per household across all pilots is 291g. Participation monitoring indicates 60% of households participate regularly and the data collected so far suggests participation is higher for weekly collections (64%) than fortnightly collections (47%). Levels of satisfaction amongst participating households exceed 89% and are as high as 96%.

Colored bags are effective

The colored collection bags supplied to householders have proved effective, promoting the collection of quality material and aiding separation of collected flexible plastics from other recyclable materials. Further data is required to determine how effective and efficient this system is on a larger scale.

Collected flexible plastic is very good quality

Based on data from five compositional analyses, the quality of materials collected is good – 90% is recyclable. Collected material is largely target flexible plastic packaging (82%) which is predominantly clean. Another 6% comprises the collection bags, 2% is non-target recyclables and the remaining 10% is non-target non-recyclable materials.

The detailed polymer composition of the 82% target material collected is:

• 69% mono polyethylene (PE) & polypropylene (PP) (45% and 24% respectively)
• 11% metalized packaging (crisp packets etc.)
• 2% all other flexibles including laminates

Encouraging proof of concept

Gareth Morton, Discovery Manager at Ecosurety and FPF representative commented: "These initial results are really positive and an encouraging proof of concept for further rollout and expansion of capacity.”

“We now need to run some of the pilots at scale to gather more data to properly investigate the longer term operational and financial impacts of collecting plastic bags and wrappings. We also need to do a lot more on reprocessing before the project ends in March 2025.”

“This year is going to be a really exciting one for the project with the planned pilot expansions and increasing the pace of reprocessing trials.”

Thomas Merry, Commercialization & Innovations Manager at SUEZ recycling and Recovery UK commented “It’s been great to see households across all seven pilot authorities embrace the service with strong participation and low levels of contamination.”

“As we enter the second half of the project, we’ll bring more households into the trial to gain further insight on the impact of demographics on participation and the amount and type of material collected.”

“By the end of the project in spring 2025 we’ll have collected enough flexible plastics to explore different reprocessing options, providing valuable insights at each stage of the value chain.”

For full detail, download the FPF FlexCollect interim report on the Flexible Plastic Fund website.