Amid significant changes to national waste policy, Greg Paradowski, technical and operations director at Sherbourne Recycling, explains how the sector is evolving, developing and adapting to meet the legislative landscape of tomorrow.
The UK is currently experiencing some of the biggest changes to waste policy seen in more than two decades. From the implementation of Simpler Recycling legislation and the roll-out of packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR), to the design and implementation of a national Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), the way that recycling is categorised, collected, handled and financed is changing fast.
With the overarching goal of enabling collection uniformity, improving consumer engagement, influencing capture volumes and increasing national recycling rates, this momentum should be seen as a significant step forward.
However, the introduction of new legislation is not simply a ‘green button solution’ and therefore requires broader, fundamental change, including changes to how we sort post-consumer packaging materials. This is driving a new dawn of recycling innovation – one that is widely defined by flexibility, agility and next-generation technology.
Legislative change and evolving packaging design
In parallel with the introduction of new legislation, packaging design is being made to adapt. Take pEPR, as an example. With the financial and operational burden of household packaging waste shifting from the local authority level to a ‘producer pays’ model, brands are pushing for disruptive packaging alternatives that not only perform better from a sustainability standpoint, but that also minimise payable fees.
As a result, we’re seeing new formats and materials flooding the market, such as ‘paperised’ solutions, mono-material plastic formats, reusable systems and a huge rise in alternative materials (everything from seaweed-based packaging to water-soluble polystyrene substitutes). Achieving ‘green’ rated pEPR fees, these new solutions are typically lighter and designed to minimise unnecessary waste.
But what happens when this new packaging reaches the recycling supply chain? Well, in principle, you’d expect them to be far easier to recycle. However, in practice, this isn’t necessarily the case. After all, many material recovery facilities (MRFs) have been optimised to sort the packaging materials that have become popularised over the past decade, not necessarily the innovations driven by evolving legislation.
As such, a ‘paperised’ solution, such as a cardboard bottle with a plastic liner, will likely travel along a recycling line, be identified as a paper-based item and baled alongside other paper products. From here, the bale will be loaded onto a lorry and sent to an offtaker ready for reprocessing.
Although relatively harmless on a small scale, these internal plastic layers are considered a contaminant and, if received in scale, can lead to rejections. It’s an interesting paradox whereby sustainable packaging may actually be contaminating the recycling stream.
This is not a failing of packaging design, or of new legislation, but a wake-up call that recycling infrastructure needs to anticipate how materials will evolve to achieve compliance. The MRFs of tomorrow will need to be more agile than ever before to keep ahead of the rapidly developing marketplace.
The revolutionary new rules of AI
While this example sounds concerning, it must be said that the UK’s recycling infrastructure is evolving fast. MRF operators are investing heavily in pioneering new technology, which is enabling the acceleration of new packaging designs.
AI and robotics, for example, are being adopted at the initial development phases of site development to build innovation, agility and flexibility into their very core. This allows operators to not only handle the market of today, but also effectively optimise their plants in line with changing legislation in the future.
Take the same example of a cardboard bottle with a plastic liner, but replace a traditional, analogue MRF with a next-generation digital MRF featuring innovative new technologies. An MRF designed around AI and robotics can effectively be ‘trained’. This means that, within just a few days, technology can be programmed to identify the format as a different product.
As such, it won’t be baled with other mono paper materials, but instead will be identified as a mixed material product. As a result, rather than contaminating a pure cardboard bale, it can be sorted correctly.
This is where the recycling sector is adapting fast. At Sherbourne Recycling, for example, training and optimising our AI-powered plant has become part of our daily routine. Setting high-quality standards enables us to deliver exceptional products to our UK offtakers.
The recycling sector of tomorrow
As the recycling industry continues to adapt to the legislative landscape of the future, investing in innovation has never been more important. Operators are moving fast with significant investment in robotics and automation, ensuring that higher recycling rates for household waste look firmly achievable.
However, while the progress the sector has already made is positive, we must be mindful that some infrastructure is reaching the end of its life. From here, investing in new sorting facilities becomes a mission-critical priority.
Retrofitting offers a solution, but the reasons for designing a site with AI and robotics central to operations are compelling. The investment not only futureproofs the site so that it is agile enough to adapt to material, market and regulatory changes, but it also delivers a quality product that the UK market demands.
The analogue sites of the past were perfectly suitable for the requirements of yesterday, but the waste management infrastructure of tomorrow needs to be far more nimble to navigate changing legislative requirements. With AI, you can customise your plant to suit exacting requirements – be that offtaker-led or legislation-led.
MRFs like Sherbourne demonstrate that the technology and processes are already available to effectively deliver upon future targets, but more work now needs to be done across the industry to ensure digital sites become standard. Achieving this will prove pivotal in creating the recycling landscape required for the next 25 years.
