ACRR: New guide on waste plastics management for local and regional authorities

Worldwide, policies are being introduced that demand recycling, diversion from landfill of untreated wastes and greater levels of resource conservation and sometimes set mandatory recycling targets.

This is being achieved through the development of local, national and international strategies, new regulations setting targets and economic, market-based instruments and taxes, and new technologies to collect, sort, treat and recover/recycle waste. It is clear that the use of plastics reduces the mass of materials needed in many applications and many sectors. However, the more numerous, specialised, engineered and differentiated become plastics materials, the more difficult will be their recovery especially by material recycling which should be the first choice after reuse and prevention, when justified by life cycle analysis in comparison with incineration and other forms of energy recovery.

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The new guide “Goode Practices Guide On Waste Plastics Recycling – A Guide By And For Local And Regional Authorities”, written in partnership with several plastics industry associations, seeks to bring together information from many sources to help local authorities identify the practical issues associated with collecting and processing waste plastics, while identifying the approaches needed to manage and exploit these wastes in ways which best suit their individual characteristics.

The Guidelines set out to address many of the challenges faced by local authorities seeking to enhance the recovery of waste plastics locally and regionally.

In particular, the following questions are answered:
why recycle plastics?
how can Local/Regional Authorities improve waste plastics collection?
how can Local/Regional Authorities improve sorting and related activities?
how to promote the development of supply of and demand for recycled plastics?

ACRR is an International Network of Cities and Regions for the exchange of information and experiences on the prevention at source, recycling and recovery of municipal solid waste.

You can download the guide under: www.acrr.org

Association of Cities and Regions for recycling, Bruxelles/Belgium

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