What will it take to build a viable plastics recycling market in the UK, and is current policy giving industry enough certainty to invest?
In the latest EfW Net Podcast, host Dr. Stephen Wise is joined by Grahame Woods, Head of Policy at Viridor, and Jamie Warmington, Director at Ceres Waste, Renewables and Environment, to explore the challenges facing UK plastics recycling infrastructure.
The conversation looks at the impact of recent policy delays, including changes to the timetable for the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and the collection of flexible plastics, and what that uncertainty means for investment in new recycling capacity.
Grahame and Jamie also discuss the economics behind mechanical and chemical recycling, the challenge of developing reliable markets for recycled materials, and why recycled plastics continue to struggle to compete with cheaper virgin polymers.
The discussion also covers:
• Creating stronger markets for recycled plastics
• The investment challenge facing new recycling infrastructure
• Chemical recycling and the potential role of pyrolysis oil
• Why policy certainty matters for long-term infrastructure projects
• End-of-waste rules and regulatory barriers
• UK and European recycling markets and policy alignment
• Traceability, transparency and waste crime
• Oil price volatility and its impact on recycled versus virgin plastics
• How policy could better incentivise plastics-to-plastics recycling
With recycling infrastructure taking years to finance, develop and build, the episode asks a fundamental question: how can government and industry create the long-term conditions needed to make investment in UK plastics recycling stack up?
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