The amount of packaging recycled or recovered in the UK is likely to be an estimated 8.2 million tonnes in 2016. 

The figure is derived from monthly reporting figures for the UK’s packaging waste system recorded between 1 January 2016 and 10 February 2017.

While the official overall figures for 2016 will not be revealed by the Environment Agency until later in March, preprocessor’s have entered their tonnage for January to December onto the Packaging Waste Database – presenting a clearer picture of the year’s performance.

The Environment Agency has also also published the final producer recycling and recovery obligation for 2016 – which stands at 7.7 million tonnes. This means nearly 500,000 tonnes of packaging recycling evidence is expected to be carried over into the 2017 compliance year as about 8.2 million tonnes of evidence was recorded.  Steel and plastics packaging showed a 14.2% and 13.7% increase on 2015 tonnages respectively according to the figures. Sharp increases were also seen in aluminum packaging recycling, with 90,053 tonnes recycled in 2016.

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