Rt Honourable Jane Kennedy
Minister of State (Farming and Environment)
DEFRA
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR

15 January 2009

Dear Minister,

A letter of support for a positive recycling policy

This letter comes to you from a round table of materials’ reprocessors who handle more than 90% of the tonnage processed for recycling within the UK.

Despite recent media headlines there is still a healthy and enduring UK market for good quality recyclable material. Ironically, we as re-processors are still importing tonnages because we cannot get sufficient quality feedstock from UK collectors.

We know you are aware of the problems created by the lack of destination for materials being collected for recycling, but these are extremely low grade mixed materials masquerading as paper, aluminium, glass etc. They have all been collected in a commingled fashion (all mixed together) and, to put it bluntly, we cannot reprocess much of the material that is currently being stockpiled. The UK reprocessing market, however, is not saturated and new UK reprocessing capacity is planned and will be coming on stream requiring suitable quality materials.

You may well be pressed, under the veil of the “credit crunch”, to in some way compensate for the inadequacies and fickleness of the world markets in recyclates.  Please resist these pressures – lack of quality and the move by many local authorities to commingled collections is the problem.

If the government is considering assistance may you please ensure:

1.    It is conditional on authorities investing in recycling collection methods which are known to provide materials of a suitable quality for reprocessing.

2.    Authorities who are already providing quality materials to the UK reprocessing market do not lose out on government investment because of their good practice (ie do not bail out poor practice and penalise good practice).

We hope that you will receive this letter in the spirit that it is intended, to assist in reaching the right conclusions for recycling policy and practice going forward.

Yours sincerely,

Chris White – Aylesford Newsprint
Eric Randall – Bryson Recycling (operates both kerbside and MRF sorting collection systems)

Andy Doran – Novelis Recycling (aluminium)
Mick Keogh – Berryman’s Glass
Alan Wheeler – Recyclatex (Textile Recycling Association)
Chris Baylis – Baylis Plastics
Andy Moore – Community Recycling Network UK
Mal Williams - Chair – Campaign for Real Recycling.

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