Yorkshire & Lincolnshire

LINPAC has one of the biggest plastic reprocessing operations in the UK. Thirty four thousand tonnes of waste plastic each year are fed into the plant in West Yorkshire.

But, it's not all from this country. LINPAC actually brings waste from abroad because, the company says, it can't get enough from UK sources.

LINPAC claims there is confusion about the difference between recycling and collection.

Collection isn't a problem. For example, in Doncaster there's a scheme which sorts waste on the doorstep and sells it on to local reprocessors.

16.9 million tonnes of rubbish ends up in landfill

But as councils increase recycling collections they're changing from schemes like the one in Doncaster where the materials are kept separate.

Now, they’re far more likely to take their kerbside collections to be sorted at a Materials Recovery Facility. Usually they’re run by private contractors, and they’re the ones who decide where each waste material is to be recycled.

For example the Yorwaste facility in York is currently sending plastic to China where it says the market is strong for mixed plastic and it says it hasn't got a “secure outlet” in the UK.

It says that companies like LINPAC need the plastic sorting, and that isn’t cost effective for the number of bottles Yorwaste actually handles.

Inside Out has surveyed 34 local authorities.

All of them have increased their recycling collections, and the amount of plastic collected more than doubles each year.

But more than half the authorities in our survey hand it over to contractors who send it abroad.

Different plastics have to be recycled separately

Plastic is very difficult to deal with, all the different kinds of plastic need to be recycled separately. LINPAC can’t deal with mixed plastic and say that it's lucky that other European countries refuse to allow material to go to the Far East.

In the UK it’s left to individual local authorities to decide what can be recycled and how it’s organised.

Local authorities are trying to keep as much waste as possible out of landfill because from 2010 if they don't do this, they'll be fined.

So they're focussed on getting people to set aside recyclables which, for many, means introducing 'commingled', or mixed, collection.

Twenty of the authorities in our survey operate some form of commingled collection, including every single one of the schemes introduced in the last year.

Commingling may be better for the local authorities, and the public might like it, but the recycling industry isn't so happy.

Paper, metal and glass recyclers are all complaining – once the waste is mixed, the quality goes down.

Bernard Chase: need for change

Bernard Chase from LINPAC says the ease with which recyclables can be exported and the convenience of commingled collections has decreased the quality of the material available to them:

“I think we need a change of emphasis”