Policy paper

Improving the quality of recyclates: Quality action plan (England only)

This Action Plan reflects the Government's drive to improve the quality of recyclates.

• From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Published: 1 February 2013

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Documents

Quality action plan: Developing proposals to promote high quality recycling of dry recyclates

Ref: pb13875

PDF, 169 KB, 26 pages

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Details

Developing proposals to promote high quality recycling of dry recyclates

The Quality Action Plan sets out measures aimed to support a market environment which is capable of promoting high quality recycling and delivering recyclates of sufficient quality to meet the standards of the relevant recycling sectors.  We want:

• relationships and transactions between the different actors in the supply chain to be based upon and informed by robust, consistent and transparent information on quality and end destination. This information flow will improve confidence and participation in recycling, and resilience in the recyclate market;
• existing best practices, in terms of managing quality and contracts, to be recognised, celebrated and become more widespread throughout the supply chain;
• to make things as easy as possible for residents and businesses to improve the quantity and quality of the materials they put out for recycling;
• to be confident that exports are recycled achieving the same environmental benefits as recycling domestically;
• high quality recycling to be properly incentivised;
• to make down-cycling the least attractive recycling option and only to take place as a last resort; and
• for co-mingled collections and outputs from Materials Recovery Facilities in particular, the quality of recyclate to be transparent and meet the necessary standards for the relevant recycling sectors.

We invite views on the detail of this plan, particularly with regard to the actions identified for others. If you have any comments on how those actions might best be delivered, please contact us by email: QAP@defra.gsi.gov.uk or by writing to:

Quality Action Plan
Defra
Area 6D Ergon House
Horseferry Road
London SW1P 2AL

Published 1 February 2013