Sustainability Home

The BPF aims to work proactively with employees, industry, stakeholders, and legislators to contribute to the plastics sustainability agenda and to the Circular Economy. Through innovation, clear communication, and education we aim to work to achieve public, customer, and regulatory recognition that plastic materials and products offer versatile, sustainable, low-carbon solutions for manufacturing in the 21st Century.

      

      

      

 

What Benefits Does Plastic Have For The Environment?

• It’s lightweight – Over the lifetime of the average car, lightweight plastic parts save around 3,000 litres of fuel [2]
• It’s durable – Plastic pipes are designed to last for more than 100 years and also reduces the overall failure rate [3]
• It saves water – The production of a plastic bags consumes less than 4% of the water needed to make a paper bag [4]
• It helps protect products - products sold loose have been found to suffer from great in-store waste in some cases leading to losses of 20%.
• It prevents food waste – wrapping Bananas in a modified atmosphere bag extends shelf-life by 2 to 3 days [5]
• It’s recyclable – all plastic can be recycled but it is not always technically or economically possible. If plastic can not be recycled the calorific value of plastic can be recovered through energy from waste plants. Recycling one tonne of plastic bottles saves 1.5 tonnes of Carbon [6]
• It only uses 4% of the world's oil production - the rest is used for transport, energy, heat or is burnt.

 

Meet The Team

 

Projects The Team Are Involved With:

• Plastic Recycling Facts
• County Durham Recycles Plastics
• Vinyl Plus
• Recovinyl
• Marine Litter Solutions

 

Join The BPF Recycling Group

The BPF Recycling Group is the representative body for UK plastic recyclers.  Formerly an independent, but affiliated organisation, the ‘BPF Recycling Council’ officially became the BPF Recycling Group on the 4th January 2011 and is now a stand-alone membership group within the British Plastics Federation.

 

Have A Sustainability Related Question?

 

• [1] Trucost, 2016 Plastics and Sustainability A valuation of Environmental Benefits, Costs and Opportunities for Continuous Improvements
• [2] https://www.plasticsindustry.org/AboutPlastics/content.cfm?ItemNumber=788&navItemNumber=1280
• [3] http://www.usu.edu/today/index.cfm?id=51095
• [4] http://www.letstalkplastics.com/facts/plastic-bags-versus-paper-bags - Sur la base de l'étude Denkstatt « The impact of plastics on life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Europe » PlasticsEurope, 2010
• [5] http://www.plasticseurope.org/documents/document/20131017112406-05_plastics_save_food_sept_2103.pdf
• [6] http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/fast-facts-plastics