Do you know what happens to your plastic waste once you've placed it into the recycling bin?

Because your carefully disposed-of waste is very probably going-up in flames or straight into overseas landfill.

This is because the UK government has a scheme, created in 1997, which financially rewards reproccesors and exporters to collect and responsibly deal with reusable plastic waste.*

But since the government doesn't actually check what happens to plastic waste once it's left the country, a number of exporters are claiming the payout and allowing this perfectly good commodity to be, literally, trashed. 

In the meantime, it's leaving the good guys, the UK plastic reprocessors, with next to no resources and over-inflated prices for what little material there is (yes, they pay for your plastic waste).

Ultimately, this will put the UK plastic recycling industry out of business, with catastrophic impact on jobs, climate change and our economy. 

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Sign this petition to call on the government to review its current plastic recovery note (PRN) system as a matter of urgency.

This will stop container-after-container of recyclable plastic leaving our shores to be incinerated or buried, and allow UK reprocessors to pay fair prices for this raw material to enable them to recycle it - just as you intended when you took the time and effort to dispose of it responsibly. 

What's more, with an overhaul of this system, the 'recycling' data the government publishes moving forward will be genuine, and not a load of rubbish... 

*The PRN system explained:

If used legitimately, the PRN system would see producers (from manufacturers to supermarkets) taking responsibility for their waste and cash being poured back into recycling schemes.

However, there are numerous ways in which the scheme is being exploited.

A major weakness in the system is that PRN’s can be claimed for materials that never existed or are not of UK origin.

Subsequently, false recycling data based on the issuing of PRNs, indicates that the UK is hitting targets – when in fact, the data is unreliable and numbers aren’t stacking up.