Berry upgrades soft plastics recycling plant as collection scheme scrutiny increases

Berry Global announced it has upgraded its plastic packaging recycling complex in Heanor, Derbyshire, United Kingdom. The facility can recycle a wide variety of flexible, or so-called soft, plastic waste, including retail packaging such as carrier bags, bread bags, film wrapping, and plastic pouches.

The US-based packaging company has upgraded the Heanor wash plant to handle and clean a greater variety of poorer quality plastic packs. The facility opened in 2021 and was then the first wash line and recycling plant in the UK able to recycle both flexible and rigid plastics from household and industrial waste.

With a 20,000 tonnes/year capacity, Berry says the plant produces high quality and consistent recyclate that can be used in a variety of industrial and consumer rigid and flexible applications such as storage boxes, refuse sacks and collation shrink films.

Since 2021, UK supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been operating collection schemes for soft plastics. Berry has a partnership with Tesco to recycle the soft plastics collected at its shops. In 2022, the two companies said the partnership ensures there is full traceability of the collected soft plastics through the supply chain. Berry’s Heanor facility was reportedly receiving 25 to 30 tonnes per month of collected material, including bread bags, fruit, vegetable and salad packaging. Berry said it reprocesses the recycled material into pellets and blends it with recovered agricultural films to produce bin liners with suitable strength.

A recent investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Everyday Plastics has found, however, that most plastics collected at supermarket take-back schemes end up being incinerated and not recycled.

As part of the investigation, Everyday Plastic volunteers placed tracking devices into 40 bundles of soft plastic packaging and dropped them at front-of-store collection points at Sainsbury’s and Tesco supermarkets across England. The investigation found that 70% of the tracked soft plastic bundles that reached a known destination were burnt, not recycled. The rest ended up at recycling facilities that recycle soft plastic waste into products other than packaging, which the report calls ‘downcycling’. Most of these facilities were located in Türkiye.

In particular, seven tracked soft plastics bundles were turned into fuel pellets, four were recycled overseas, three were incinerated in the UK, two were incinerated overseas, and one was recycled in the UK.

Of the 18 Tesco tracked bundles, only six reached a final destination. Only one was recycled in the UK. Four were recycled overseas and one was converted into fuel pellets.

Of the 22 Sainbury’s tracked bundles, 11 six reached a final destination and all were burnt.

Berry announced its new investment in the wake of the investigation results.

“Recycling soft plastic poses a challenge, particularly in terms of the quality of material collected, but at Berry we are continuing to work to make recycling of this material a reality through the creation of useful second life products,” said Mike Baxter, external affairs director – Berry Global recycled products.  “For example, front of store soft plastic currently goes into the production of new refuse sacks, while other flexible plastic is used to produce our Sustane recyclate which goes back into packaging such as shrink film,” he added.

Berry further said that its Heanor plant holds RecyClass certification that confirms full traceability throughout the recycling and production processes.