The scheme is supported by J&B Recycling – an FCC Environment company.
FPF FlexCollect is a UK-wide pilot project designed to tackle the challenge of recycling flexible plastic packaging – materials like plastic bags, wrappers, and film. The funding is provided by FPF.
The Newcastle pilot originally began in June 2023 and included 7,000 Newcastle homes.
Eligible households received blue “survival bags” to put their flexible plastic packaging into. These bags were then collected by Newcastle city council alongside the rest of their regular commingled recycling and processed by J&B Recycling.
Mark Penny, contract lead for J&B Recycling, said: ” Flexible plastic packaging is notoriously difficult to recycle, but with the right collection methods and infrastructure in place, we can make a significant impact. This project is helping FPF FlexCollect and the industry as a whole to determine how best to include flexible plastic packaging in kerbside collections, forming part of Simpler Recycling.
“The quality of the overall kerbside recycling collected in the trial areas has also improved since the introduction of the survival bags for flexible plastic packaging. This might be because residents on those rounds are paying more attention to their recycling, the amount of contamination has reduced.”
Recycling flexible plastics
Earlier this month, Everyday Plastic published a report that suggested most soft plastics are not being recycled which was met with mixed reviews from the industry.
The investigation saw 40 Apple AirTag trackers put into bundles of soft plastics and placed in the collection points at Sainsbury’s and Tesco stores across England.
The investigation found that none of the trackers were “closed-loop recycled”.
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