Progress towards our voluntary pledge to increase the volume of recycled post-consumer polyolefin content used in European products to 3 million tonnes a year by 2025 is measured using PCEP’s study of collected polyolefin (PO) waste in Europe, undertaken by Conversio.
The original pledge was based on PCEP 2016 market data and the 2019 market study demonstrated steady progress with clear increase in the volume of recyclates from collected post-consumer waste. Two years later, the 2021 repetition of the survey showed we have already reached our pledge to increase the amount of recycled post-consumer polyolefin (PO) used in European products to 3M tonnes. As a result, we upgraded our level of ambition, increasing the target to 4M tonnes a year by 2025 – double the amount used in 2016 (2M tonnes a year).
In addition to monitoring progress, the data generated through this survey helps us determine where we need to focus our efforts to move faster. And while polyolefins are still more recycled than the plastics industry average, the 2021 results show there is plenty of room for improvement.
The data demonstrates the scale of the opportunity to drive more waste away from landfill or energy recovery and towards recyclers instead. There’s an evident need for significant investment in collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure and PCEP has been calling on all the appropriate organisations and authorities to make this a reality.
