(GUF) LITHUANIA - HOW TO OPERATE A DEPOSIT RETURN SCHEME

Original illustration inspired by the Symbolist art of Lithuanian painter and composer M. K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911) - link

Last time, I wrote about Brazil's extraordinary success in recycling aluminium drinks cans; an excellent example of what can be achieved when a material has genuine commercial value and a well established collection network.

This time, I'm visiting a different country, with a significantly different approach - Lithuania - a Baltic nation with a population of approximately 2.9 million people, Lithuania has spent the past decade demonstrating something that should interest everyone involved in waste management, not least, Britain. Give people a simple, convenient reason to return their empty packaging and the results can be remarkable; and in Lithuania, it all started with ten cents.

A Small Deposit, an Enormous Difference

On 1 February 2016, Lithuania introduced a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) covering eligible plastic, metal and glass drinks containers. The principle was effectively the same as most DRS schemes; when someone purchased a drink they paid an additional €0.10 deposit, return the empty container to a participating collection point and they received their ten cents back - no complicated environmental philosophy - no requirement for consumers to understand polymer chemistry - just a simple financial transaction.

Before the scheme was introduced, approximately 34% of Lithuania's PET drinks containers were being collected through the existing system. For comparison, Britain is already starting from a considerably stronger position; according to recycling charity RECOUP's 2024 UK 'Household Plastic Packaging Collection Survey', an estimated 70–80% of plastic drinks bottles were collected for recycling in 2023, without a Deposit Return Scheme.

Although the figures are not perfectly like for like, they highlight an important distinction. Lithuania was attempting to transform a poorly performing collection system. Britain is proposing to introduce an entirely new collection infrastructure into a country where a substantial majority of plastic drinks bottles are already being recovered. This doesn't mean Britain's DRS can't deliver environmental benefits, particularly through reduced littering and improved material quality, but it raises the question whether the additional material recovered justifies the considerable investment in new machines, transport, collection and processing infrastructure, particularly when much of that material is already being collected through existing recycling services?

34 to 92

By the end of 2016, the new Lithuanian scheme had achieved a 74.3% return rate across eligible drinks containers. By the end of 2017, that figure had climbed to 91.9% and this wasn't simply an impressive opening performance followed by a gradual decline. According to reverse vending technology company TOMRA, Lithuania's return rates at the end of 2025 were:

• 90% of PET drinks containers
• 91% of metal drinks cans
• 84% of non-reusable glass drinks containers

Across the scheme as a whole, the reported return rate was approximately 90% and ten years after its introduction, the system continues to deliver.

More Than 700 Million Reasons to Celebrate

According to Lithuania's deposit system administrator, Užstato Sistemos Administratorius (USAD), consumers returned approximately 708.58 million drinks containers during 2024 which included nearly 360 million PET bottles, approximately 303 million aluminium cans, more than 45 million glass bottles and around 800,000 steel cans.

For a country of fewer than three million people, that represents an extraordinary volume of material being returned through a dedicated collection system and there's another benefit; much of this material is collected separately from household mixed recycling, helping preserve its quality and making it more attractive to reprocessors. Anyone who has spent time around a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) will understand why this matters.

There's a considerable difference between receiving relatively clean, identifiable drinks containers and attempting to recover them from a mixture of food contaminated packaging, shredded paper, broken glass and whatever else somebody has bizarrely decided is recyclable. Optical sorting equipment is clever but it isn't magic.

Making Recycling Convenient

One of Lithuania's strengths is the accessibility of its return network. The system operates largely through retailers, with reverse vending machines allowing consumers to return eligible containers and recover their deposits. Like Britain's DRS, larger shops and rural retailers have return obligations while smaller retailers can also participate. Importantly, the deposit isn't simply lost if someone doesn't want to spend it immediately. Refund vouchers can be used towards shopping or redeemed for cash.

There's a commercial incentive running through the entire arrangement. Consumers want their deposits back - retailers participate in the return infrastructure - material processors receive valuable, relatively uncontaminated feedstock and the system administrator coordinates the money, information, logistics and materials. It's a practical example of how environmental objectives and commercial interests can work in harmony with one another.

There Are Qualifications

As impressive as the Lithuanian figures are, there's an important distinction between a container being returned for recycling and confirmation that every gram of that material has actually been recycled into another product. Return rates are not the same measurement as final recycling rates. Processing losses still exist, contamination, rejected material and the efficiency of downstream recycling operations all influence the eventual outcome.

Nor does a 90% return rate mean that the remaining 10% has necessarily been littered. Some containers may still enter other waste or recycling collections; and a deposit system isn't free to operate. Machines require investment, space and maintenance. Containers must be collected and transported - sorting and counting facilities need staff, equipment and energy. Retailers have responsibilities and somebody has to pay the operating costs. These aren't arguments against deposit systems; simply reminders that successful recycling requires considerably more than putting a machine outside a Sainsbury's.

What About Britain?

Our Deposit Return Scheme is scheduled to launch on 1 October 2027, introducing a refundable 20p deposit on eligible single use PET plastic bottles and aluminium and steel drinks cans between 150ml and 3 litres. Wales is taking a slightly different approach by including glass in its scheme, although glass containers will initially carry a zero-pence deposit during a four-year transition period. The scheme administrator, Exchange for Change, has appointed five major recycling and waste management operators to provide logistics and processing services across the country, with new collection vehicles and processing infrastructure planned, but the real test will come when the system becomes operational.

• Will return points be convenient?
• Will the machines be reliable?
• Will retailers have sufficient space?
• Will the collection logistics work efficiently across cities, towns and rural communities?
• What happens to existing kerbside and commercial recycling services when millions of valuable PET bottles and aluminium cans are diverted into a completely separate collection network?

Having worked in waste management for more than four decades, I've learned that there's a substantial difference between a scheme that looks excellent on paper and one that works efficiently on a wet Tuesday morning in November and Lithuania's achievements demonstrate what's possible.

Two Countries, Two Different Approaches

What interests me most is the contrast between Brazil and Lithuania. Brazil has developed an exceptionally effective aluminium can recycling system, supported by the inherent commercial value of aluminium and the people and businesses who collect it. Lithuania has used a modest refundable deposit, retailer participation and coordinated infrastructure to encourage consumers to return their drinks containers. The collection models are different, as are the social and economic circumstances but both demonstrate something fundamental. Recycling performance improves when the people handling the material have a practical reason to recover it and an accessible system for doing so. We can produce all the environmental slogans, targets and sustainability reports we like but ultimately the results depend on what happens to the packaging after the consumer has finished with it. Lithuania has shown that ten cents, backed by a properly organised collection system, can make an enormous difference.

The United Kingdom is preparing to find out what twenty pence can achieve. I shall be watching with considerable interest and knowing the waste industry as I do, I suspect the first twelve months will provide more than enough material for several more articles. More like this (Lithuania) - link - more like this (Brazil) - link - more like this (DRS) - link

(GUF) BRAZIL - LEADING BY EXAMPLE

Image inspiration - the thoroughly brilliant Tarsila do Amaral - link

In 2024 Brazil reported a 97.3% recycling rate for aluminium beverage cans, with 417,700 tonnes recovered. Recicla Latas, the organisation managing the sector’s reverse logistics system puts that at approximately 33.9 billion cans. The rate is also recorded on Brazil’s government waste information platform, SINIR.

For clarity, that figure relates specifically to aluminium drinks cans, rather than all Brazilian waste but within that category, it's an extraordinary achievement and it wasn't an isolated good year. According to Recicla Latas, 2024 marked sixteen consecutive years with rates above 96%. That kind of consistency takes a functioning chain of collection, trading, processing and manufacturing.

An empty can does not make its own way to a furnace. Someone has to collect it and that brings us to the catadores and catadoras; the workers who collect and sort recyclable materials, helping return resources to productive use.

Their work requires knowledge of materials, practical judgement and considerable effort. Through cooperatives, many also organise the selling of recovered materials, share income and make decisions together. As WIEGO, the international network supporting workers in informal employment, describes, these organisations give workers a collective voice as well as a practical way to earn a living.

Belo Horizonte offers a particularly interesting example of how that contribution can be recognised. The International Labour Organization documents the city’s inclusion of ASMARE, an association of recyclable material collectors, in its municipal recycling scheme from 1993. It also describes the development of Redesol, a cooperative network established in 2010 to help workers sell materials collectively, strengthen their bargaining position and improve their businesses.

There's a useful lesson here for anyone discussing a circular economy; the people doing the collecting and sorting need a proper place in the system - and recognition has also translated into further progress. In September 2025, WIEGO reported that negotiations involving Brazil’s National Movement of Waste Pickers had helped bring cooperatives into producer responsibility and reverse logistics arrangements, resulting in payments reaching more than 5,000 workers across approximately 300 cooperatives.

Selling recovered material has value; so does providing the service that makes its recovery possible. Celebrating these achievements should go hand in hand with supporting fair payment, safe working conditions and investment in equipment. Admiring hard work ought to mean wanting that work properly rewarded.

For me, Brazil’s story brings recycling back to something very practical. Materials need somewhere to go, businesses need reliable supplies, and the people connecting the two deserve respect.

PET Recycling

Brazil's achievements extend beyond aluminium. According to the Brazilian PET industry association, ABIPET, Brazil recycled 410,000 tonnes of post consumer PET packaging in 2024, representing 53% of PET packaging discarded by consumers. Of the recycled PET, 37% went into bottle preforms or bottles, while other uses included textiles, sheet materials and strapping.

The connection to the people behind the process continues here too; cooperatives directly supplied 33% of the recycling feedstock reported in ABIPET’s survey. Their contribution reaches well beyond collecting cans, they're also helping keep valuable plastics in productive use. Another Brazilian achievement worth recognising and another reason to give the people doing the work their share of the credit.

To my Brazilian readers: your country has an aluminium can recycling achievement worth sharing and a cooperative movement worth learning from and to the catadores and catadoras whose work helps make it happen: obrigado pelo trabalho de vocês—thank you for the work you do. More like this (Brazil) - link - more like this (cans) - link - more like this (PET) - link

(GUF) ONE MILLION PAGEVIEWS - THANK YOU

Image inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link - more like this - link - more like this - link

(GUF) SMALLEST PACKAGE - BIGGEST PROBLEM

Image inspiration - René Magritte - link

We spend an extraordinary amount of time discussing plastic bottles, carrier bags, straws and food containers; all feature prominently in recycling campaigns, environmental legislation and the endless debate over single use plastics.

One of the most troublesome forms of plastic packaging however receives comparatively little attention. The plastic sachet. That tiny packet of shampoo, instant coffee, detergent, sauce or food seasoning might appear relatively harmless. It weighs next to nothing, costs very little to manufacture and allows consumers to purchase everyday products in small, affordable quantities. Unfortunately, the very characteristics that make sachets commercially attractive also make them an absolute nightmare for the waste management industry and we've managed to manufacture billions upon billions of them.

A packaging format with nowhere to go

The sachet's problem begins with the materials. Many are not made from one straightforward, recyclable polymer but instead, manufacturers combine polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, aluminium foil and other barrier materials into thin, laminated structures. From a recycling perspective, it's a disaster. These layers are bonded together, making separation commercially impractical using conventional recycling technology. Even sachets manufactured entirely from one polymer can present problems because they're so small, lightweight and are frequently contaminated with the product they once contained.

At a Materials Recovery Facility such small flexible items are difficult to identify, separate and recover reliably. They can be lost among the screening residues or rejected during subsequent sorting and even when they're recovered, the next question is whether anybody actually wants to buy them.

How big is the problem?

A 2019 investigation by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), based on waste assessments across several communities, estimated that the Philippines was using more than 163 million plastic sachets every day (almost 60 billion a year).

In February 2026, a separate investigation by Break Free From Plastic and GAIA examined almost 300,000 pieces of plastic waste collected across eight Nigerian cities. Sachets were the most common type of plastic waste identified, ahead of bottles, bags and wrappers. These are not simply isolated examples of careless littering. They illustrate the consequences of introducing enormous quantities of low value disposable packaging into markets where collection and recovery infrastructure cannot possibly keep pace. The results are depressingly predictable.

Discarded sachets accumulate along roadsides, in waterways, on beaches and in drainage systems. Where regular waste collection is absent or inadequate, they may be dumped or openly burned. The material might have served its original purpose for a matter of seconds, then the resulting waste remains in the environment for decades, progressively fragmenting into smaller and smaller particles.

Who's responsible?

Between October 2023 and February 2024, environmental organisations working with Break Free From Plastic undertook a dedicated sachet brand audit across India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. 807 volunteers examined 33,467 discarded sachets from 2,678 brands. The companies most frequently identified included: Unilever: 1,851 sachets; Wings (Indonesian equivalent of Unilever or Procter & Gamble): 1,565 sachets; Mayora Indah (Mayora concentrates on food, confectionery, snacks, coffee and powdered beverages): 1,548 sachets; Procter & Gamble: 1,194 sachets; Nestlé: 1,171 sachets. Other prominent names included Wadia Group, Balaji Wafers, Yes2HealthyLife, JG Summit Holdings and Salim Group.

These figures are counts from the surveyed locations, not estimates of the companies' worldwide sachet production. Nevertheless, they're valuable evidence of which manufacturers' packaging is turning up as litter. Around 86% of the discarded sachets examined contained food products, demonstrating that the issue extends well beyond shampoos and detergents.

Unilever deserves particular attention because of the astonishing scale of its sachet business. A 2023 Greenpeace investigation estimated that the company was on course to sell approximately 53 billion plastic sachets that year ~ around 1,700 every second. Unilever has acknowledged the difficulties associated with flexible packaging and invested in collection programmes, redesigned materials and alternative delivery models. Its 2025 sustainability reporting also records reductions in virgin plastic use but the company's own figures show that only 15% of its flexible plastic packaging was reusable, recyclable or compostable in 2025, under its reporting methodology - i.e. there remains an enormous difference between recognising a problem and eliminating it.

Which countries are taking action?

Governments are beginning to respond, although the legislation is considerably less comprehensive than the headlines sometimes suggest.

Sri Lanka introduced restrictions in March 2021 prohibiting plastic and polythene sachets containing 20ml or 20g or less, with exemptions for food and medicines. An important intervention, although its limited scope left manufacturers opportunities to continue selling other sachet formats.

India prohibits plastic sachets for storing, packaging or selling gutkha, tobacco and pan masala under its Plastic Waste Management Rules. This is a specific product restriction rather than a general sachet ban.

Rwanda introduced broad restrictions on single-use plastic products under legislation enacted in 2019, building upon its earlier restrictions on plastic bags. Limited authorisations remain possible where suitable alternatives are unavailable.

The European Union is taking a different approach. Under its Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, from January 2030 certain single-serving condiment and sauce packaging will be prohibited in hotels, restaurants and catering establishments. Miniature disposable toiletries in accommodation are also targeted. There are exemptions, including for takeaway meals and certain medical care settings.

The Philippines, despite its substantial sachet pollution problem, has introduced Extended Producer Responsibility legislation that specifically includes sachets and other flexible plastic packaging. This places recovery obligations on qualifying businesses, but is not a nationwide prohibition on sachets.

In Nigeria, Lagos State's 2025 restrictions on certain single use plastics explicitly exempted drinking water sachets — despite the considerable problems associated with their disposal. The direction of travel is encouraging, but there's still an enormous gap between the scale of sachet production and the scope of existing restrictions.

What about Britain?

We have our own relationship with unnecessarily complicated packaging. Sauce sachets, coffee portions, sample products and single use cosmetics are familiar examples, particularly in hospitality and catering.

England's Simpler Recycling programme was originally intended to introduce mandatory household and workplace collections of flexible plastic packaging in 2027 but no surprise, in July 2026, the Government postponed that requirement until April 2030 and even when and if these collections do begin, an important distinction remains. Collecting flexible plastic is not the same thing as being able to recycle every form of flexible plastic.

Mono-material films with viable reprocessing markets are one thing. Tiny, heavily printed, contaminated, multilayer sachets are quite another.

There is another way

It would be easy to blame consumers, particularly in developing economies for purchasing products in small quantities but that would also be spectacularly unfair. Millions of families simply cannot afford to purchase larger quantities of everyday essentials. Small portions make products financially accessible, even if the unit price is sometimes higher.

In the Philippines, the traditional practice of tingi allowed consumers to purchase small quantities using their own containers - a principle that is being revived. The Kuha sa Tingi project, developed with Greenpeace Philippines and local authorities, has introduced refill facilities into neighbourhood shops where, rather than buying a new disposable sachet every time, customers can purchase the quantity they require using reusable containers.
The initial pilots in Quezon City and San Juan City reportedly prevented more than 50,000 sachets from entering the waste stream. Participating retailers also reported improved profitability.

It's a relatively modest achievement compared with billions of sachets produced annually, but it demonstrates that alternative commercial models can work; they just need investment, infrastructure and manufacturers prepared to support them.

The question manufacturers need to answer

Manufacturers have developed remarkable combinations of materials capable of keeping products fresh, extending shelf life, reducing packaging weight and lowering distribution costs, but too often it appears that the fundamental question of what happens to the packaging after use has been left until late in the design process, if at all and plastic sachets are an almost perfect illustration.

If a manufacturer can engineer five different materials into one tiny disposable packet, surely it can devote some of that ingenuity to designing a better way of delivering the product.

The waste industry cannot keep being expected to solve problems that have been deliberately designed into packaging long before it ever reaches a recycling bin and perhaps that's the real scandal of the plastic sachet - designed for convenience, optimised for distribution and perfected for profit - everything, it seems, except what happens post consumer. More like this (sachets) - link - more like this (Philippines) - link - more like this (Lagos) - link

(GUF) FRESHERS, FRANKENSTEIN & FRUSTRATED RECYCLING

Image inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link

Along with a colleague, I've spent the past week visiting Oxford University colleges, meeting this year's freshers and attempting to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding recycling. Our engagement stand includes a miniature Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) conveyor belt, allowing students to get involved in sorting everyday packaging and deciding what can, and perhaps more importantly, what cannot, go into our Dry Mixed Recycling (DMR) collections.

It's a simple concept, but a remarkably effective one. Rather than standing in front of a poster boring people about what they should be doing, we give them something practical to engage with. They make the decisions, we discuss the results and occasionally we're able to explain why something that looks perfectly recyclable isn't necessarily suitable for our recycling system.

Judging by the participation and interest we've experienced throughout the week, it works. I'm delighted to say that every year, the general level of awareness appears to improve a little; not a dramatic transformation - we haven't suddenly produced an entire generation of recycling experts but there's a noticeable increase in the number of students interested in what happens to their waste, why certain materials are accepted and why others are rejected.

More encouragingly, we're seeing greater curiosity about the packaging itself. Why is one plastic container recyclable and another not? Why can seemingly identical packaging require different disposal routes and why do manufacturers continue to produce packaging that causes problems for the recycling industry? All good questions and they're questions our industry welcomes.

We can invest millions in collection vehicles, processing facilities and recycling technology, but if the person disposing of the packaging doesn't understand what happens next, we're already making the process unnecessarily difficult and sometimes, even when they do understand, the packaging itself conspires against them.

The Pringles Problem – A Frankenstein That Refuses to Die

Few products have better demonstrated the frustrations of packaging design than the infamous Pringles tube. For years, this peculiar creation has combined cardboard, metal, plastic and foil into a single piece of packaging. A masterpiece of product protection but something of a Frankenstein's monster when it comes to recycling.

Over the last year, we've been explaining to students that Pringles has been developing and introducing a redesigned, predominantly paper-based tube, replacing the troublesome metal base and making the packaging far more compatible with conventional paper recycling systems and to be fair, there is evidence that this is happening. The redesigned tube was introduced into the UK market in 2024. It's approximately 90% paper rather than strictly mono-material, but it's a significant improvement over its predecessor. The plastic lid and protective seal still need to be dealt with separately, according to the appropriate local recycling instructions.

The technology has clearly been developed, substantial investment has been made and the redesigned tubes have entered the marketplace but having spent the week explaining all this to Oxford's newest students, I went into Sainsbury's on Saturday, only to discover shelves stacked with the familiar old Frankenstein tubes, apparently alive and well.

I'm not suggesting that manufacturers can transform their production and distribution systems overnight, however, there's something frustrating about explaining the progress being made in recyclable packaging while the very product you're discussing continues to demonstrate the problem. How long should it take for improved packaging design to replace its less recyclable predecessor on our supermarket shelves? It begs the question whether pEPR is having any effect?

Innovation is welcome. Implementation is what ultimately matters and until then, our old friend Frankenstein remains a useful exhibit on the miniature MRF conveyor.

Mentos – When Recyclable Packaging Becomes Difficult to Recycle

Whilst discussing crap packaging design, there's another little frustration worth mentioning. Certain Mentos gum containers, along with packaging produced by other manufacturers, demonstrate another particularly irritating habit: taking an otherwise recyclable plastic container and wrapping it in another, thin layer of plastic. Presumably for presentation, branding, tamper evidence or some combination of the three but unfortunately, what might look perfectly sensible on a supermarket shelf can create problems once it reaches a Materials Recovery Facility. Modern MRFs increasingly rely on sophisticated optical sorting equipment, using near-infrared technology to identify different polymers as they travel along conveyor belts. The equipment needs to recognise what it's looking at, however, when a recyclable plastic container is covered by another plastic film, potentially manufactured from a different polymer, the scanner may detect the outer material rather than the container beneath it resulting in a perfectly recyclable container being misidentified, incorrectly sorted or rejected altogether.

Not every sleeved container will suffer this fate. The materials used, the coverage of the sleeve and the capabilities of the sorting equipment all influence the outcome. Nevertheless, it's a recognised problem and one that better packaging design can help avoid.

It's a wonderful example of how a tiny packaging decision, probably made thousands of miles away from the nearest recycling facility, can have consequences throughout the recovery process. We can spend considerable amounts of money investing in collection systems, optical sorting equipment and recycling infrastructure, only for a few grams of unnecessary plastic packaging to compromise the whole exercise. Surely, in 2026, designing packaging that can actually pass through the recycling systems we've already built shouldn't be too much to ask of Perfetti Van Melle (Mentos), Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Reckitt and others?

Recyclable Doesn't Necessarily Mean Recycled

This is perhaps one of the most important messages we try to communicate during our engagement events. Just because something carries a recycling symbol doesn't mean that placing it in a recycling bin guarantees it will be recycled. Even the familiar three-arrow recycling symbol can indicate that a material is technically recyclable, rather than confirming that it will be accepted by a particular collection scheme. Clear disposal instructions are far more useful, although local arrangements must still be considered. A Materials Recovery Facility isn't a magical machine capable of turning every discarded material into something useful, it's a sorting facility. Its purpose is to separate recoverable materials into grades that can be supplied to reprocessors. However, those materials must meet appropriate quality specifications and, ultimately, there must be someone willing and able to use them.

I've spent more than forty years working in the waste industry, and one principle has remained remarkably consistent throughout that time. A recycling facility is only ever as effective as the markets available for the materials it produces. Without viable outlets for recovered materials, all the sophisticated sorting equipment in the world cannot deliver a sustainable recycling system which makes good packaging design, effective separation and education all the more important.
Education Is a Two-Way Street

Oxford attracts students from across Britain and around the world, many of whom arrive having experienced completely different recycling arrangements. What was acceptable in a recycling bin at home might not be acceptable in their college. That's not necessarily because either system is wrong. Different collection and processing arrangements can mean different materials are accepted. Our job is to explain what happens here, why our system operates as it does and how students can help us recover the greatest possible amount of useful material.

The questions students ask, particularly about packaging, provide a useful insight into how people understand recycling and where the confusion lies. Increasingly, that confusion isn't simply about which bin to use. It's about why the packaging was designed that way in the first place. We continually ask consumers to recycle more effectively, but surely manufacturers must take equal responsibility for ensuring that the products and packaging they place on the market can actually be recovered. There's little point telling someone to recycle responsibly if the packaging they're holding has been designed in a way that makes responsible recycling unnecessarily difficult.

An Encouraging Week

After spending the week meeting students across Oxford's colleges, as ever, I'm left feeling genuinely encouraged. Not because everyone knows precisely what goes where. They don't, and I wouldn't expect them to but because so many are prepared to participate, ask questions and understand a little more about the materials they consume and discard.

If we can encourage students to think twice about what they place in a recycling bin and perhaps even question the packaging they purchase in the first place, we're achieving something worthwhile, and if those questions eventually influence the businesses manufacturing and selling the products, so much the better. Ultimately, successful recycling isn't just about collections, vehicles, MRFs and impressive percentages, it's about people, products, infrastructure and markets all working together.

Sometimes the best place to start that conversation is with a group of freshers, a miniature conveyor belt and a Pringles tube that really ought to have retired by now. A thoroughly enjoyable week, and my thanks to the colleges, students and colleague (TT) who made it possible. More like this (Oxford) - link - more like this (MRF) - link - more like this (Unilever) - link

(GUF) FASHIONABLE RECYCLING

Image inspiration - Salvador Dali - link

Milan Fashion Week is upon us again. For several glorious days, beautiful people sit beside a runway looking thoughtfully at clothes that in almost any other circumstances would result in somebody quietly asking whether you'd dressed in the dark. This is fashion.

Normal rules don't apply. A jacket is no longer a jacket, it's a statement. Trousers cease being trousers and become an exploration of form and if somebody walks onto a catwalk wearing what appears to be a dismantled camping chair, half a duvet and a pair of safety goggles, nobody shouts: “oi mate, you've got your trousers caught in the gazebo', instead, fifty photographers start taking pictures.

Looking at some of the creations appearing around Milan this week, i've reached the conclusion that fashion designers and waste managers have more in common than either profession would care to admit. We both spend an enormous amount of time looking at things and wondering what on earth it's made of? The difference is that the fashion industry then charges £4,800 for it whilst the waste industry charges £59.50 for the consignment note.

However, there is something wonderful happening behind all this theatrical nonsense, because while Milan is busy deciding which entirely serviceable items of clothing we should consider hopelessly unfashionable by next Thursday, another part of Italy has spent decades becoming extraordinarily good at dealing with the crap they made last year. Welcome to Prato.

Prato, in Tuscany is one of Europe's great textile districts and has a long history of taking unwanted textiles, sorting them, pulling them apart and turning them back into useful fibre. In other words, while Milan is busy inventing clothes nobody knew they needed, Prato has developed an industry dedicated to dealing with clothes people have discovered they really didn't.

The Circular Economy 

This is the circular economy, or, as previous generations occasionally called it, not chucking perfectly useful stuff away because you're a fashion victim. The concept is simple - old clothing arrives, sorted, buttons, zips and other unwanted components are removed then the textile can be mechanically broken back down into fibre, blended and potentially made into new material. There's nothing particularly glamorous about textile recycling; no photographers; no champagne; no celebrity sitting in the front row unable to see anything because they're wearing sunglasses indoors. Just machinery, people who understand textiles and an inconvenient appreciation of physics, and therein lies one of the fashion industry's little problems. Fashion exists because fashion changes - deliberately - routinely - rapidly.

If everybody bought six decent shirts, two pairs of trousers, a coat and a jumper and then wore them until they fell apart, Milan Fashion Week would become a very short event indeed. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen; jumpers are practical and perfectly adequate, see you next year".

The entire fashion machine depends upon newness - new season - new colours - new silhouettes - new fabrics - new collections - new reasons why the thing you bought eighteen months ago now apparently identifies you as an out of date loser, and at the luxury end of the market, the results can become magnificently absurd.

Human beings have been making clothing for thousands of years, but the fashion industry continues to behave as though nobody has quite cracked the problem. Sleeves are questioned - why should they have to be where your arms are? Shoulders expand. Trousers widen until the wearer resembles a yacht under full sail. Then trousers contract until bending over becomes an insurance issue. Occasionally somebody removes half the garment entirely and the price goes up four fold. This, allegedly is innovation.

Meanwhile the environmental consequences of clothing have become considerably harder to ignore. Manufacturing fabric consumes raw materials, energy and water. Clothes are transported enormous distances. Synthetic fibres introduce plastics into the equation. Blended materials can be difficult to recycle and ultimately an enormous quantity of clothing reaches the point where its owner decides they wouldn't be seen dead in it which is unfortunate, because only seventeen months earlier they couldn't be seen dead without it.

Italy already possesses something environmental policy frequently talks about but rather less frequently achieves: an established industrial ecosystem capable of collecting, sorting, processing and manufacturing textiles. Prato has been doing versions of this for generations. Modern technology is now being added to the process - optical sorting, fibre identification and increasingly sophisticated methods of separating materials. The ambition is textile-to-textile recycling; a jumper becomes fibre; the fibre becomes textile; the textile becomes a three armed jumper; the fashion industry photographs it; some mug buys it, then six months later somebody decides three sleeves is so yesterday and the whole thing begins again. This may sound cynical, but there's an important distinction. Recycling is extremely useful, reuse is better, but neither entirely addresses the question whether we're simply making too much stuff? This is where environmental discussions about fashion sometimes become wonderfully complicated.

92 Million Tonnes Of Textile Waste Per Annum

A company may proudly announce that a garment contains recycled material but if we manufacture three billion environmentally improved garments that nobody particularly needed, we've merely created a more sustainable route to having too many clothes; rather like manufacturing biodegradable leaflets explaining the environmental benefits of not printing leaflets. There's also a temptation to confuse the catwalk with the real problem. The bizarre outfits appearing in Milan aren't going to bury Europe beneath discarded twelve-foot feathered hats - catwalk fashion is theatre. The real volumes come from ordinary clothing, mass production, fast fashion, short product cycles, overstock and a culture in which clothes can sometimes be astonishingly cheap and that's where the recycling challenge becomes industrial rather than amusing which brings us back to Prato.

The most interesting thing about textile recycling is that many of its central ideas aren't new at all. Our grandparents reused clothes, clothing was repaired - fabric had value. Buttons were removed, material was saved and garments were handed down, no sustainability consultant standing nearby holding a reusable bamboo clipboard, things simply weren't thrown away if they remained useful.

Modern textile recycling is obviously more complicated, particularly with synthetic fibres and blends but the philosophy is surprisingly old-fashioned.

• Value materials.
• Recover materials.
• Make things last.
• Stop pretending recycling gives us unlimited permission to manufacture disposable rubbish.

So perhaps Milan and Prato represent two halves of the same extraordinary Italian textile story. Where Milan asks what should we wear next, Prato asks what are we going to do with everything you told us to wear last year? One attracts models, celebrities, designers and photographers, the other attracts tonnes of old clothing.

If the current collections in Milan are anything to go by, the distance between the catwalk and the textile recycling centre may occasionally be considerably shorter than anticipated. More like this - (Prato) - link - more like this (textile recycling) - link - more like this (Milan) - link - note like this (Italy) - link - more like this (fashion/PPWR) - link

(GUF) THE DRS CLOCK IS TICKING

Image inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link

Britain's Deposit Return Scheme is due to go live on 1 October 2027. On that morning, millions of drinks containers will suddenly acquire a 20p value and consumers will quite reasonably expect to be able to return them and get their money back.

The concept is simple; the logistics behind it are anything but. As the DRS logistics procurement reaches its final stages, the organisations responsible for physically making the system work face an enormous operational challenge. Government planning documents envisage a national infrastructure capable of dealing with the registration and reporting of more than 20 billion containers, supported by collection vehicles, counting and sorting centres, IT systems, return points and reverse-vending machines and all of it has to work together.

What's going to happen

From October 2027, bottles and cans are not simply going to disappear into existing recycling collections. They'll begin travelling backwards through an entirely new supply chain. Reverse-vending machines and manual return points will receive them. Containers will have to be stored, vehicles will collect them, routes will have to be planned and continually adjusted, depots and counting centres will have to process them. Barcodes must be recognised, deposits reconciled and enormous quantities of data transferred accurately between retailers, producers, contractors and the Deposit Management Organisation.

Vehicles have to be sourced, drivers recruited, depot capacity secured, processing equipment installed, software developed and integrated, staff trained, routes modelled, contingency arrangements created. Then somebody has to test the whole thing under something approaching real-world conditions.

Exchange for Change itself identifies operational readiness, system building and testing as key priorities ahead of October 2027, while its current information says full collection arrangements follow completion of the logistics tender. The danger is therefore not that nobody has thought about DRS, it's that a plan on a screen and an operating national logistics network are two very different things.

Where others have stumbled

Germany provides perhaps the clearest warning. Its mandatory deposit requirement arrived in 2003 but Germany's Constitutional Court later recorded that industry had not built a functioning clearing system ready for the January 2003 introduction. The nationwide standardised DPG system we now associate with Germany did not arrive until May 2006. Today it is exceptionally successful with return rates above 96% but getting there was not instantaneous.

Ireland launched its DRS in February 2024 with more than 2,000 return points. Its first year ultimately became a considerable success with more than 980 million containers returned but that figure also illustrates how quickly a new system has to scale once consumers adopt it.

Romania offers another useful comparison. Its scheme began at the end of 2023 and by its first anniversary consumers had returned more than three billion containers. By November 2024 its monthly collection rate had reached 76%. Again, the lesson isn't that DRS failed — it is that a national return system goes through a very substantial operational ramp-up once real containers replace forecast numbers on spreadsheets.

What needs to be done

Britain needs to spend the remaining implementation period trying to break the system before the public does it for us. Don't just test whether a reverse-vending machine accepts a bottle.

• Test what happens when fifty machines in one area fill simultaneously on a Saturday afternoon.
• Test what happens when a collection vehicle breaks down.
• Test Christmas.
• Test a heatwave.
• Test football finals and festivals.
• Test what happens when actual return volumes are 30% above the model.
• Test the communications network going down, incorrect barcodes, rejected containers, missed collections, overflowing storage areas and processing equipment operating at maximum capacity.

Most importantly, test the interfaces between organisations. A retailer's machine may work perfectly and the haulier may have enough vehicles, but neither helps if the information telling one when the other needs collecting doesn't work.

What we need to be mindful of

The UK DRS does not need to be perfect on day one but it does need to be resilient. There will inevitably be problems. Vehicles will fail, machines will break, forecasts will be wrong and consumers will behave differently from the models. The test of the system will therefore not be whether something goes wrong, it'll be whether sufficient spare capacity, people, vehicles, processing capability and contingency have been built into the system to recover when it does.

Germany eventually created one of the best-performing deposit systems in the world. Ireland's scheme rapidly grew into a major collection system. Romania moved billions of containers during its first year but their experience should remove any temptation to think that October 2027 is simply a date on which Britain flicks a switch.

We are attempting to build an enormous new national reverse-logistics network and the clock is already ticking. More like this (DRS) - link - more like this (Germany) - link - more like this (Romania) - link - more like this (Ireland) - link

(GUF) WASTE TO H2 TO WASTE

Image inspiration - Man Ray - link

Toyota is taking a hydrogen fuel cell Hilux to the Dakar Rally. The DKR GR FC Hilux will compete in the experimental Dakar Future Mission 1000 category in January 2027 covering 1,000 competitive kilometres across 13 stages. Toyota hopes to demonstrate that hydrogen fuel cell technology can withstand heat, dust, vibration and the general mechanical brutality of desert competition.

It's an impressive engineering project but the more revealing test of hydrogen may be taking place at considerably lower speeds, stopping every few yards to empty bins. If hydrogen has a serious future in heavy transport, the waste industry ought to be one of the places where it can prove itself.

Waste collection is not ordinary transport

We already operate fully electric waste collection vehicles, however our initial decision to adopt them was not made without reservations. Most discussions about electric commercial vehicles overlook a fundamental difference between delivering goods and collecting waste. A delivery vehicle generally leaves its depot fully charged and heavily laden. As it completes its round, it becomes progressively lighter. A waste collection vehicle does precisely the opposite. It leaves the depot with a full battery but an almost empty body. As its working day progresses, the remaining charge falls while the vehicle becomes steadily heavier. By the time it is carrying its greatest payload, it has its smallest remaining energy reserve.

Propelling the vehicle is only part of the demand. Energy is also needed to lift containers, operate hydraulic equipment and repeatedly compact the collected material. The vehicle may stop and start hundreds of times during a single round. Regenerative braking can recover some of that energy. Predictable routes and overnight depot charging also make waste collection well suited to electrification but those advantages do not erase its unusual operating profile. A waste collection vehicle is not simply a delivery lorry with bins substituted for parcels.

Is this where hydrogen enters?

A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is still essentially electric. Hydrogen passes through a fuel cell to generate electricity which powers an electric motor. A battery normally provides additional energy storage and handles peaks in demand. Its potential advantage is that additional operating range can be carried as hydrogen rather than through an enormous battery pack. Refuelling can also take minutes rather than hours. For a heavy waste vehicle, that could offer several benefits such as longer working rounds, quicker return to service, less dependence on lengthy charging windows, greater suitability for double shift operations and potentially less loss of payload to battery weight.

That last point matters. Every kilogram occupied by batteries, tanks or propulsion equipment is a kilogram that cannot be used to carry waste. A zero emission vehicle that repeatedly reaches its legal weight before its body is full may be environmentally admirable but operationally expensive. Hydrogen does not need to outperform batteries on every route. It only needs to solve the duties on which battery electric vehicles struggle.

Norba has already built one

This isn't merely a concept waiting for Toyota to finish playing in the sand. Geesinknorba has already participated in the development of hydrogen powered waste collection vehicles. One vehicle produced through the European HECTOR programme used an electric Mercedes Econic low-entry chassis, Geesinknorba collection equipment, a 145 kWh battery and four hydrogen tanks storing a total of 20 kg at 350 bar.

Its anticipated operating range on hydrogen was approximately 120 km. Other vehicles in the programme used different combinations of fuel cells, batteries and storage pressures. Some were designed around 350-bar hydrogen and others around 700 bar. The variation tells us something important, i.e. the industry has not yet settled upon a standard technical formula. These were not mass produced vehicles rolling from a mature production line. They were early generation machines assembled from conventional chassis, specialist waste bodies, batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems supplied by several different businesses. That's engineering development, not yet straightforward fleet procurement.

The HECTOR experiment

HECTOR—Hydrogen Waste Collection Vehicles in North West Europe was led by the amazingly foresighted Aberdeen City Council and involved vehicles operating in Aberdeen, Groningen, Arnhem, Duisburg, Herten, Brussels and Touraine. Its purpose was to examine fuel cell refuse vehicles under actual working conditions. The project covered urban stop-start collections and longer rural rounds, with operators gathering information on procurement, infrastructure, training, maintenance and vehicle performance. The early financial comparison was sobering.

HECTOR estimated the purchase price of a conventional refuse vehicle at between €220,000 and €300,000. A hydrogen fuel cell equivalent was estimated at between €630,000 and €751,000 (approximately two to three times as much).

The vehicles typically stored between 15 and 20 kg of hydrogen. Expected urban range was around 120 km, potentially rising considerably on rural routes where the vehicle was not constantly stopping, lifting and compacting. One truck was expected to consume roughly one complete 15–20 kg fill during a working day. Operators also had to consider depot alterations, hydrogen detection, ventilation, specialist maintenance, driver training and a secure supply of suitably pure fuel. Planning and constructing a permanent hydrogen station could take up to two years and that's the less glamorous side of hydrogen adoption. Buying the vehicle is only the opening ceremony. Keeping it fuelled, maintained and earning money is the actual project. The HECTOR operational handbook describes both the potential and the considerable practical preparation involved.

The hydrogen question begins before the vehicle moves

A fuel cell vehicle emits water rather than carbon dioxide at the point of use. That makes it attractive in towns and cities where air quality and noise matter, however, “zero-emission” at the tailpipe is not the same as zero-carbon. Most hydrogen is still manufactured from fossil fuels. Green hydrogen, produced by electrolysing water using renewable electricity, offers far greater carbon savings but also introduces a substantial efficiency penalty.

Electricity can be sent directly through the grid into a battery. Producing green hydrogen requires that electricity to be used to split water, after which the hydrogen must be compressed, stored, transported and converted back into electricity inside the vehicle.

At every stage, energy is lost. If an operator can complete the same round using a battery-electric vehicle charged directly from renewable electricity, hydrogen will struggle to make either the environmental or financial case. Its opportunity lies where direct electrification becomes operationally restrictive.

Waste could provide both the demand and the fuel

The waste industry has one further reason to be interested: it does not merely consume energy. It also handles materials from which energy can be produced. Hydrogen can potentially be made using electricity generated from energy-from-waste facilities, landfill gas or anaerobic digestion. It may also be produced from biomethane, although the carbon performance depends upon the feedstock, production method and treatment of the resulting emissions. More controversial proposals involve producing hydrogen through the gasification or pyrolysis of waste. These processes are often promoted using the seductive language of “waste-to-hydrogen”, but the description alone proves very little.

The important questions remain - what material is being used; could it have been reused or recycled instead; how much external energy does the process require; what emissions and residues are produced; how much usable hydrogen emerges and what is the genuine lifecycle carbon saving?

Turning unrecyclable waste into low-carbon hydrogen could create a compelling circular system: waste collected by vehicles powered by fuel made from residual waste. Turning valuable material into expensive hydrogen while disguising fossil carbon behind an attractive label would be rather less revolutionary. The feedstock and the arithmetic matter more than the colour assigned to the hydrogen in the press release.

Batteries have already left the starting line

Hydrogen’s difficulty is not that it has no technical advantages. It's that battery electric vehicles are already improving and entering working fleets. Operators now have practical data on electric RCV routes, charging, driver behaviour, payload and energy consumption. Battery capacity continues to increase, charging becomes faster and manufacturers benefit from a much broader electric-vehicle supply chain. Hydrogen refuse vehicles remain comparatively rare, expensive and dependent upon specialist infrastructure. A fleet manager cannot base a procurement decision on theoretical range alone. The questions are brutally practical:

• Will the vehicle complete the round in winter?
• How much payload does it sacrifice?
• Where will it refuel?
• What does the hydrogen cost per kilogram?
• What happens if the filling station is unavailable?
• Who can repair the vehicle?
• How quickly can parts be obtained?
• What replacement vehicle is available when it fails?
• And what will it be worth at the end of its working life?

Waste does not stop accumulating because an experimental drivetrain is waiting for an engineer.

A specialist tool, not a universal answer

Hydrogen does not have to defeat batteries everywhere to justify its existence. For predictable urban rounds completed within one shift, battery electric RCVs may remain the more efficient and practical option. They can return to a depot, charge overnight and use regenerative braking throughout their stop-start routes. Hydrogen may prove more valuable for the difficult remainder:

• long rural collection rounds;
• high-mileage commercial services;
• vehicles operating two shifts;
• hook-loaders and skip vehicles;
• heavy specialist collections;
• and operations where charging time or battery weight materially reduces productivity.

That's a narrower opportunity than the promised “hydrogen economy”, but it is also a far more credible one.

Toyota’s Dakar Hilux will attract headlines because speed, sand and motorsport make good pictures. A hydrogen refuse vehicle completing an ordinary Wednesday collection round is unlikely to generate the same excitement, but the waste vehicle may be the more important test. The waste industry places exceptional demands on its vehicles. They become heavier as their stored energy falls, while continually powering lifting and compaction equipment. If hydrogen can offer greater productive range, rapid refuelling and acceptable payload without imposing intolerable costs, refuse collection could become one of its strongest applications but the case will not be established through prototypes, launch events or statements about water vapour.

Operators need published figures for availability, payload, fuel consumption, maintenance, infrastructure, whole-life cost and actual carbon intensity. They need performance measured over years, seasons and thousands of working rounds. Electric refuse vehicles are already doing the job. Hydrogen must now demonstrate that it can do the difficult parts better. Until then, it remains a promising fuel awaiting something the waste industry understands very well: Proof of collection. More like this (H2) - link - more like this (waste H2) - link - more like this (Dakar) - link

(GUF) EV BATTERY RECYCLING

Image inspiration - René Magritte - link

British government's have spent much of the last decade worrying about how quickly we can replace petrol and diesel cars with electric ones. A whole new different question is now beginning to emerge.

What happens when all those electric cars start dying? Not the cars particularly but the batteries. Millions of lithium-ion battery packs are steadily entering the British vehicle fleet and although most should remain useful for many years, they won't last forever. Some will fail, some will be damaged in accidents and others will simply reach the end of their useful automotive life. At that point Britain will begin receiving an entirely new waste stream containing lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, graphite, copper and aluminium and it's going to become a very large one indeed.

When does the wave hit?

For most of the 2020s, much of the battery material entering recycling plants is expected to come from manufacturing waste, damaged batteries, accident write-offs and the relatively small number of older electric vehicles reaching the end of their lives. That will begin to change around the start of the next decade. Research associated with the Faraday Institution has previously suggested that around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries could require recycling in Britain by 2030.

More recent modelling from the Advanced Propulsion Centre suggests around 2031–32, batteries coming from retired electric vehicles are expected to overtake battery manufacturing scrap as the main source of material entering the recycling system. Then the numbers really start climbing. Earlier government planning estimates suggested Britain could eventually be dealing with something approaching 150,000 tonnes of EV batteries every year by the middle of the 2030s. The exact figure will inevitably move. Cars may last longer. Batteries may be repaired. Some vehicles will be exported. Some batteries may spend several more years operating as stationary energy storage before finally reaching recycling but the direction is difficult to argue with.

• The first substantial wave arrives around 2030.
• The much bigger one follows during the 2030s.

Can Britain recycle them?

Britain already has industrial lithium-ion battery recycling capability. Recyclus operates a lithium-ion recycling facility in Wolverhampton capable of dismantling and processing batteries into materials including copper, aluminium and black mass which is essentially the valuable powder left after battery cells have been shredded and separated containing materials including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite.

The UK currently has around 17,000 tonnes per year of mechanical battery pre-treatment capacity according to recent Advanced Propulsion Centre estimates. By 2030 this could exceed 60,000 tonnes per year. If Britain expects around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries requiring recycling around 2030, then theoretically the country may actually have enough capacity to dismantle and shred them but shredding is the easy part. Britain needs facilities capable of taking black mass and recovering the individual materials to a quality suitable for manufacturing new batteries otherwise we'll simply be dismantling the batteries here and exporting the valuable part overseas for someone else to refine allowing them to make the serious money from it.

Building the next stage

This is where companies such as Altilium become important. Its proposed ACT3 facility in Plymouth is intended to recover lithium, nickel materials and graphite from battery waste rather than simply producing black mass. The project received £18.5 million of government support in 2026 and is intended to begin commissioning towards the end of 2027. A much larger future facility proposed for Teesside could eventually process material equivalent to around 150,000 EV batteries every year. If projects like these succeed, Britain could begin creating something resembling a domestic battery materials industry and that changes the entire conversation because an old EV battery isn't simply waste. It's effectively a box containing concentrated raw materials that somebody has already gone to the trouble of mining, refining and transporting halfway around the world.

Who pays?

There will probably never be one standard price for recycling an electric vehicle battery. Some batteries will be valuable; some may be taken away at little or no cost whilst others could be extremely expensive to deal with. A good illustration comes from the emerging UK market for used EV batteries. An industry battery value index recently placed a first-generation Nissan Leaf battery with sufficient remaining condition for possible repair or reuse at around £550.00 positive value. The same type of battery in sufficiently poor condition that it was suitable only for recycling was valued at approximately minus £2,000 i.e. one battery might earn you money whilst the other might require somebody to pay £2k to get rid of it.

Many older electric vehicles use battery chemistries containing nickel and cobalt, both relatively valuable metals. Increasing numbers of newer EVs use lithium iron phosphate — LFP — batteries. LFP has several advantages. It's comparatively cheap, durable and avoids expensive nickel and cobalt. Unfortunately those same advantages make it considerably less attractive to recyclers.

European recycling markets have already seen substantial gate fees quoted for LFP batteries because the materials recovered from them may not cover the cost of processing. So one of the strange consequences of improving battery technology could be that batteries become cheaper to manufacture but more expensive to recycle.

Who actually gets the bill?

Under current UK rules, EV traction batteries are classed as industrial batteries. As such, battery producers have responsibilities for the collection, treatment and recycling of them and under certain circumstances must provide take back without charging the end user. That doesn't mean recycling is free. It simply means the cost moves somewhere else within the system. Manufacturers, compliance schemes, dismantlers, insurers and ultimately consumers may all contribute to paying for it.

There will also be batteries valuable enough for recyclers or second life businesses to pay for and there will be damaged batteries that nobody sensible wants anywhere near an ordinary vehicle. A crashed or thermally damaged lithium-ion battery can require specialist handling, packaging and transport because of the risk of fire and thermal runaway. At that point the value of the lithium inside becomes rather less exciting than the question of how you safely move several hundred kilograms of potentially unstable battery.

Britain's future mine

There is another reason why the idea of a domestic battery-material economy should not be dismissed too quickly. Britain may eventually be able to source some of the lithium itself. In Cornwall, Imerys British Lithium has identified a very large lithium-bearing granite resource near St Austell and demonstrated the production of battery grade lithium carbonate at pilot scale. The proposed commercial project was designed to produce around 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year, enough, according to UK government estimates, to support roughly 500,000 electric vehicles annually.

The complication is that the project is not currently moving towards production. In 2026 it was placed into care and maintenance while Imerys sought a long-term partner and reconsidered capital allocation. A separate company, Cornish Lithium, is continuing to develop its Trelavour project, which is targeting up to 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide a year.

Potentially, Britain could eventually have both ends of the chain: lithium extracted in Cornwall at one end, and lithium recovered from dead EV batteries at the other. The interesting question is whether we can build the industrial middle before somebody else does it for us.

For decades Britain has worried about its dependence on imported raw materials. Lithium comes from overseas, as does nickel, cobalt and graphite supply is heavily concentrated internationally yet during the next twenty years we are going to quietly accumulate enormous quantities of all of them inside vehicles travelling around British roads and eventually those materials come back. The important question is whether Britain develops the infrastructure to keep them here because there are two possible futures.

In one, Britain collects old electric vehicle batteries, dismantles them, produces black mass and exports it for somebody else to refine. In the other, those batteries become the beginning of a domestic source of lithium, nickel, graphite, copper and other materials capable of feeding directly back into manufacturing. The first generation of electric cars was largely built using materials mined around the world. The next generation might increasingly be built from the remains of the first meaning that maybe Britain's largest future battery mine won't be underground at all, It'll be parked outside. More like this (Cornwall) - link - more like this (sodium-ion) - link - more like this (black mass) - link

(GUF) PLASTIC GOES HOME (2 OF 2)

Image inspiration - Man Ray - link

For decades we've treated waste plastic as a recycling industry problem. We collect it, sort it, wash it, shred it, separate it by polymer and colour and then attempt to persuade somebody to turn it back into plastic again. When that works, it can work extremely well. PET drinks bottles, HDPE bottles and sufficiently clean polyethylene and polypropylene all have established mechanical recycling routes in the UK.

The problem is everything else. Films, pouches, laminates, contaminated food packaging, mixed polymers and flexible plastics. Plastics containing additives, inks, labels and adhesives. The enormous, complicated collection of the plastics stream that we continue to manufacture in staggering quantities but are considerably less accomplished at recycling.

Baytown, Texas

Perhaps we've been asking the wrong industry to solve it. In Baytown, Texas, ExxonMobil is doing something fundamentally different. It's taking waste plastic and treating it not as rubbish, nor even as plastic but as hydrocarbon feedstock and that distinction will become enormously important.

Extended Advanced Recycling

ExxonMobil calls its technology 'Exxtend advanced recycling'. The underlying process is generally described as pyrolysis, where plastic is heated without oxygen and broken apart at molecular level; completely different from mechanical recycling where we're essentially trying to preserve the polymer. A polyethylene bottle is sorted, washed, shredded, melted and ultimately made into another polyethylene product.

Thermal decomposition asks what happens if we stop trying to preserve the plastic and instead recover the molecules from which it was made? Polyethylene and polypropylene are particularly interesting because chemically they consist overwhelmingly of carbon and hydrogen. In essence, they're long hydrocarbon chains that have been manufactured into useful solid materials; apply sufficient heat under controlled conditions and those long chains can be broken into smaller hydrocarbon molecules.

Exxon says its process converts waste plastic into raw materials chemically comparable with conventional feedstocks used within its enormous petrochemical manufacturing system. Those recovered materials can then be co-processed with fossil-derived feedstocks and used to manufacture chemicals, lubricants, fuels and new plastics and suddenly waste plastic starts looking different - no longer simply a troublesome material that the waste industry has failed to find a home for; it's carbon and hydrogen that somebody has already gone to considerable trouble and expense to extract, refine and manufacture, and perhaps throwing that carbon into an incinerator because we can't mechanically recycle the polymer is a wasteful conclusion to the story.

Baytown has moved beyond the familiar world of promising pilot plants and impressive artists' impressions. ExxonMobil's first commercial scale advanced recycling unit at its Baytown complex began operating in December 2022. A second followed and by February 2026, a third unit was operational. Exxon says Baytown can now process up to 250 million pounds of plastic waste each year (approximately 113,000 tonnes annually) and, importantly, there is some actual throughput behind the nameplate capacity. Exxon reported that by January 2026 the Baytown operation had processed more than 150 million pounds (around 68,000 tonnes) — cumulatively.

The plant can currently process around 113,000 tonnes annually but that doesn't mean it already does process 113,000 tonnes every year. This distinction matters enormously in advanced recycling, where proposed capacities have often proved considerably easier to announce than sustained industrial throughput has been to achieve, but Baytown has nevertheless crossed an important threshold. This isn't ExxonMobil saying it thinks it could recycle difficult plastic one day, it's already doing it.

Perhaps Baytown's greatest advantage, however, isn't the pyrolysis technology itself. It's Baytown, the facility. The advanced recycling operation sits within an existing integrated ExxonMobil petrochemical complex. The refining, chemical processing, laboratories, utilities, logistics, product manufacturing and markets already exist around it. Exxon explicitly argues that this integration allows waste derived material to be co-processed through existing equipment avoiding the need to create an entirely separate manufacturing system.

I believe the future of plastic recycling and more specifically thermal plastics recycling doesn't lie in building thousands of standalone pyrolysis plants and expecting each one to become a miniature petrochemical industry, but instead, attaching the recycling technology to the petrochemical industry that already exists.

Baytown doesn't mean we should start throwing every plastic we can find into a furnace. Exxon says Exxtend can accept feed mixes containing high proportions of HDPE, LDPE and polypropylene, together with some quantities of polystyrene, PVC and other polymers. Examples of material it has processed include artificial turf, lubricant and grease bottles and multilayer films and this is where the technology begins to fit surprisingly neatly alongside conventional recycling rather than replacing it.

Excluding PET

PET can certainly be broken down chemically or thermally but it isn't an especially attractive feedstock for this type of hydrocarbon cracking. Unlike polyethylene and polypropylene, PET contains significant oxygen within its molecular structure. More importantly, if you have a clean PET bottle, destroying the polymer doesn't make much sense as we already know how to recycle good quality PET back into rPET.

Deposit Return Schemes - where they fit

DRS increasingly allows countries to capture drinks bottles separately before they become badly contaminated with mixed household waste. Separate collection also preserves a relatively pure, valuable PET stream suitable for bottle to bottle recycling. TOMRA cites a European median collection rate of around 87% for PET beverage containers under deposit systems compared with around 50% in kerbside collection and notes the higher material purity obtained from separate DRS collection and DRS is expanding. Reloop expects more than 70 jurisdictions covering roughly 641 million people to have operational single-use beverage container deposit systems by the end of 2027.

At first sight, DRS has nothing whatsoever to do with a giant ExxonMobil plant in Texas, but perhaps it does. A mature plastics system might increasingly separate material according to its best recovery technology. Clean PET bottles remain PET bottles. Good quality separated PE and PP are mechanically recycled where that makes environmental and economic sense but contaminated films, multilayer packaging and difficult mixed polyolefins move somewhere else.They become feedstock for plants such as Baytown. In that scenario, DRS doesn't necessarily provide Exxon with cleaner PET. It helps by taking the PET away. We stop insisting that every plastic must travel through the same recycling system.

Mass Balancing

A piece of plastic entering Baytown cannot be followed through the complex and pointed at later as a particular new plastic container. The recycled hydrocarbon feedstocks are mixed with conventional fossil-derived feedstocks inside Exxon's manufacturing system. Exxon therefore uses mass-balance accounting. Essentially, if a qualifying amount of plastic waste enters the system, less recognised processing losses, an equivalent amount of qualifying output can be allocated as “certified circular” under the accounting system.

Exxon is actually quite explicit about the limitation: its certification is not a claim that a particular product physically contains a specified quantity of recycled molecules, nor does the certificate itself represent a greenhouse gas saving.

Critics will argue that customers may hear “recycled plastic” and imagine a physical closed loop that doesn't really exist at molecular level and that criticism deserves to be taken seriously but the accounting method doesn't necessarily invalidate the underlying industrial idea. Once recycled and fossil derived hydrocarbons are mixed inside a refinery and petrochemical complex, attempting to keep individual recycled carbon atoms in a separate pipe would defeat the benefit of using the existing infrastructure.

The more important questions are how much waste plastic actually enters? How much useful raw material comes out? What fossil feedstock does it displace? How much energy is consumed and what happens to the outputs?

Exxon says its process can convert nearly 90% of the used plastic it processes into useful raw materials - an impressive claim, but it shouldn't be confused with saying 90% becomes new plastic. Useful raw materials can ultimately contribute to fuels, lubricants, chemicals and plastics and that distinction will become increasingly important if advanced recycling grows.

Can Baytown become big enough to matter?

Global plastics production reached approximately 430.9 million tonnes in 2024. Polypropylene alone accounted for around 19%; LDPE and LLDPE another 13.9%; and HDPE and MDPE approximately 12.1%. In other words, polyethylene and polypropylene — the hydrocarbon rich polymers of particular interest to processes such as Baytown — represented roughly 45% of global plastics production.

Put Baytown beside those numbers and its present scale looks tiny. At around 113,000 tonnes of annual capacity, one current Baytown represents approximately 0.026% of annual global plastics production. If we absurdly asked today's Baytown to process the entire world's annual plastics production, we would need something approaching 3,800 of them.

Nobody sensible whould propose thermally decomposing every plastic. The question is what proportion of the enormous plastic stream cannot economically or technically be retained through better forms of mechanical or dedicated polymer recycling and then the arithmetic becomes much more interesting. Imagine future integrated petrochemical recycling units capable not of 100,000 tonnes annually, but 500,000 tonnes or one million tonnes. Fifty one-million-tonne facilities would process 50 million tonnes each year. One hundred would process 100 million tonnes. At that point we are no longer discussing a laboratory curiosity. We are discussing infrastructure capable of influencing global plastic flows and Exxon plainly believes scaling is possible.

In 2024 the company announced more than $200 million of additional investment at Baytown and Beaumont and set an ambition to reach one billion pounds roughly 454,000 tonnes of global advanced recycling capacity annually by 2027, with additional projects considered across North America, Europe and Asia. Its most recent Baytown update in February 2026 said the company was on track to reach approximately 450 million pounds of global annual capacity by the end of 2026. Those remain capacity figures and corporate plans, not proof that hundreds of millions of tonnes can eventually be processed economically. Feedstock supply, contamination, preprocessing, economics, energy consumption and regulation could all constrain expansion.

Exxon itself identifies collection, sorting, aggregation and preprocessing of suitable plastic waste as a significant part of the challenge but this is precisely why Baytown deserves watching.It's beginning to expose what the actual bottlenecks are.
The scale of the problem isn't waiting for us. The plastics problem is not becoming smaller while recycling technology catches up. The OECD projects that, without substantially stronger policies, global plastics use could rise from 460 million tonnes in 2019 to 1.231 billion tonnes in 2060.

Plastic waste could rise from 353 million tonnes to 1.014 billion tonnes annually. Even under that scenario, the OECD projects only around 17% of plastic waste being recycled in 2060.

We could become steadily better at collecting plastic while continuing to manufacture it considerably faster than we develop markets capable of consuming the resulting recyclate. Mechanical recycling, reuse, designing unnecessary plastic out of products, deposit systems, better sorting and producer responsibility must be part of the answer but none of those will make hundreds of millions of tonnes of difficult plastic disappear.

Plastic goes home

There is an irony here that will understandably make some environmentalists deeply uncomfortable. The companies that possess perhaps the greatest infrastructure, chemical expertise and potential capacity to process waste plastic on genuinely industrial scales are the same petrochemical companies responsible for manufacturing enormous quantities of virgin plastic but chemistry doesn't care about irony.

Plastic is fundamentally carbon, hydrogen and, depending upon the polymer, other elements arranged into extraordinarily useful molecules. The petrochemical industry understands those molecules because it created them and maybe we've spent too long asking how can the waste industry recycle all this plastic?

Baytown suggests - what if the petrochemical industry has to take some of it back? Not the clean PET bottle that can perfectly well become another PET bottle or the good quality polyethylene that already has a viable mechanical recycling market, but the difficult fraction. The films, the laminates, the contaminated polyolefins, the material currently being burned because nobody can find anything better to do with it. Maybe its next destination should not be an incinerator; maybe it should go back into the chemical industry as raw material.

Baytown is nowhere near large enough to solve the global plastics problem today. Exxon has certainly not demonstrated that thermal decomposition can economically absorb hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic and serious questions remain around energy, emissions, yield, mass balance and feedstock preparation but Baytown may be demonstrating something more important than a finished solution. Protect the polymers worth preserving - mechanically recycle what can genuinely be mechanically recycled. Use DRS and better collection to produce cleaner, more valuable material streams and for some of what remains, stop thinking of it as failed plastic - think of it as carbon, because ultimately the only industry operating on anything approaching the scale of global plastics production may be the industry that made the plastic in the first place.

Perhaps, after a remarkably long journey through our homes, businesses, bins and recycling plants, some of our plastic simply needs to go home. Baytown - link - Tomra - link - more like this (chemical recycling) - link - more like this (Texas) - link