Axion Consulting is headed by its director Keith Freegard and he has recently stated that in 2012 the country is going to have a key focus on the recycling of plastics. He expects that throughout the year the amount of plastic being recycled by industry is going to increase significantly. Axion consulting is a leading recovery specialist of plastic in the UK.Mr Freegard has said that he expects the amount of plastic recycling to increase because of improved technology that will allow plastic to be sorted more effectively. Currently recycling rates of plastic drink bottles are at around 50 percent and Mr Freegard has said that this is a figure that is too low, and that there is plenty of room for immediate improvement.
He commented, “Councils are now collecting more plastic from the kerbside than ever before and those companies who recycled plastics have more supply than they can deal with. It is important the new technologies are developed to improve the sorting and ability for these companies to recycle plastic efficiently.
Methods for dealing with different types of rigid and film plastic need to be developed and companies also need to focus on how to deal with the residue left behind on the plastics.”
Mixed plastic recycling makes things very easy for consumers but unless this plastic can be sorted out it is actually going to damage the amount of plastic that is being recycled. If plastics are sorted by the consumer then they can be easily recycled but this does not encourage consumers to recycle plastic as the level of effort to sort is too high.
Mr Freegard continued, “The technology infrastructure that is currently in place was not designed to deal with mixed plastic recycling and changes need to be made to allow this infrastructure to deal with this type of mixed waste. If we want to meet our plastic recycling targets in the UK then we need to develop technology that is better at extracting different types of plastic from each other.
“It is great that the amount of plastic being taken from consumers is high and this is much better than it going to landfill, however, if the infrastructure doesn’t keep up with this increase in supply then this plastic is just going to go to waste.
There are also many sorts of technology that could be implemented to improve the entire process. For example, residue from plastic products and items that cannot be recycled can be burned to generate power for the machines that recycle the plastic.”
In order for Mr Freegard’s ideas to be put into place there would have to be a dramatic shift in the recycling industry, but this is something that he sees as essential for its future progress.
He highlights that if new methods of recycling are not adopted then many valuable recycling resources collected from consumers will simply go to waste. Axion Consulting is a part of the larger Axion Group which develops processing plants for the recycling sector and also assist in the selection of equipment.