Recycling has largely been regarded by its exponents as an art rather than a science. So a book purporting to be about its chemistry should be important. This book is based on the proceedings of a 1996 symposium and, three quarters of the content reviews the history, background, socio-economic statistics and legislation and only 25% is about Chemistry.
Most EU states are introducing legislation to force the recycling of used packaging. In March 1997, the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations were passed into UK legislation, with implications for a wide cross-section of industry. The legislation requires recovery of more than half of used packaging from the waste stream by 2001. 'Recovery' includes energy recovery through incineration, and within this target is a figure for materials recycling of 16%.
Although used packaging amounts to less than 5% of the total solid wastes produced in a typical EU state, it accounts for about 27% of municipal collected waste. The total plastics content of our dustbins is less than 10%.
There is no doubt that the legislation covering the recycling of waste packaging is going to be a major driving force for the plastics recycling industry. By the year 2001, companies involved in the production chain of plastics packaging, from raw material to retailer, will all be paying for the recovery and recycling of waste plastics packaging.
The UK plastics recycling industry currently recycles less than 100,000 t of waste postuse packaging, and by 2001 this will have to grow to some 300,000 t. That this growth is not currently commercially viable is self-evident, and to be increased it will have before becoming a viable proposition.
The conference proceedings provide a basis for understanding the sociological pressures that the plastics packaging and recycling industries are facing. They also highlight the fact that there is a need for considerable progress in chemistry if the targets for recycling are to be achieved without incurring excessive financial and environmental costs.
Used plastics packaging consists mainly of a mixture of dirty contaminated plasticsnot all of one type and often admixed with other flexible packaging materials (foils, papers and paperboard, etc.) Separation of the different plastics from one another, whether by hand sorting on a