UK recycling system 'open to fraud and error', watchdog warns

Consumers' efforts to recycle plastic packaging may be going to waste as the UK's national recycling system is open to fraud and error, spending watchdogs have warned. 

A study by the National Audit Office, which has special powers to demand information and data from companies, found that Britain's official recycling rate could be overstated because it wrongly assumes all packaging which ends up at recycling plants is recycled. 

In reality around 10 per cent is contaminated and cannot be recycled, while an unknown quantity is shipped abroad to plants where there is a "high risk" that it will not be recycled.

The report brings into question official figures by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, which estimates that the UK has exceeded its overall packaging recycling target every year since 1997, and recycled 64 per cent of packaging in 2017. 

Plastic recycling is the most vulnerable to fraud because the financial incentive for companies to falsely claim they have recycled it is higher than for any other material, the NAO said. 

It calculated that if official plastic recycling rates were overstated by 24 percentage points in the first half of 2018, the UK would have failed to meet its plastic-specific target.   

The extent of the potential fraud is as yet unknown but is currently under investigation by waste charity Wrap. 

Concerns have been mounting that businesses are overstating over how much plastic, paper and cardboard they recycle in wake of a ban on sending it to China. It is feared that an increasing proportion of waste set aside for recycling is now being thrown into the sea.

In addition the NAO also found that the Environment Agency, which polices the UK's recycling system, had failed to notice that some of the UK's biggest companies had not been paying into the system. 

For example the Agency failed to spot that convenience store chain Costcutter was wrongly excluded from the scheme over a 17 year period between 1997 and 2014. 

Costcutter has now made a donation of £650,000 to Wrap to make up for the breach.  All large companies in the UK which produce or sell packaging are required to take part in a "Packaging Recovery Note" scheme which ensures that a certain proportion of waste is recycled.  They meet these obligations by buying recovery notes from recycling companies in the UK, or from companies that export waste for recycling abroad.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said: “If the UK wants to play its part in fully tackling the impacts of waste and pollution, a tighter grip on packaging recycling is needed. Twenty years ago, the government set up a complex system to subsidise packaging recycling, which appears to have evolved into a comfortable way of meeting targets without addressing the fundamental issues.

"The government should have a much better understanding of the difference this system makes and a better handle on the risks associated with so much packaging waste being recycled overseas.”

Mary Creagh MP, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, added: “The system should have made packaging simpler and easier to recycle, delivered high quality UK recycling, and protected our streets, countryside, rivers and seas from plastic litter. But today’s report shows it has become a tick-box exercise.

"Waste is exported with no guarantee that it will be recycled, producers are not made to pay to recycle their packaging, and the system is open to fraud and error. “The Government must fix this broken system in its upcoming resources and waste strategy."