ENVIROO, the specialist Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) infrastructure provider, has launched a new white paper that identifies a £750 million ‘gap’ in the UK’s PET bottle recycling infrastructure.
Funding the Infrastructure Gap: How the Deposit Return Scheme and Investment Grade policy can stimulate the domestic food grade rPET industry, was launched at an event held at the Palace of Westminster.
The occasion brought together parliamentarians, financiers, beverage brands, think tanks and recycling industry leaders to listen to a panel discussion examining whether Britain will have the domestic reprocessing capacity to recycle the high-quality PET the DRS collects — or whether that material will be lost to export.
Panellists included:
- Wera Hobhouse MP, vice chair of the all party parliamentary group on the environment and member of the energy and net zero select committee
- George Shorey, senior sustainability and community impact manager, Heineken UK
- Andrew Dean, partner, Bird and Bird
- David Drew, circular economy specialist, PwC
- Ahmed Detta, CEO Enviroo
- Dr Margaret Bates, circular economy and resource management consultant
- Ciarán Hope, chief operating officer, Re-turn
- Sam Jones, director of policy and sustainability for Great Britain at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP).
The panellists debated various external policy levers and decisions that could be enacted to support £750 million investment into the PET recycling sector so that all PET material collected via the DRS can be fully recycled back to pellet by 2040.
David Drew highlighted how policy uncertainty is difficulty for businesses to work with, and that long-term commitment and support is required for willing investors to feel confident to commit resource.
Ahmed Detta said, “For too long, the UK has treated PET as a material to be exported, downgraded, or lost from the system. The introduction of the DRS changes this. Our ambition at Enviroo is simple: to use the DRS as the catalyst for a step-change in domestic PET reprocessing — done properly, done transparently, and done sustainably. PET is where the plastics industry can prove that true circularity works. Get this right, and we create the blueprint for every other polymer stream that follows.
“The measures we set out in this white paper could unlock significant private investment to fund the new reprocessing infrastructure that the DRS feedstock stream makes economically viable, but that current policy does not provide the confidence to commit. The optimal time to make these decisions is now — each week of delay narrows the window before October 2027.”
Andrew Dean added, “The DRS is first and foremost an opportunity to increase recycling rates, reduce waste, and ensure more drinks containers are returned to productive use. But it is also a significant industrial opportunity. By creating reliable supplies of high-quality recycled material, the UK can attract investment in domestic reprocessing, create skilled jobs, and capture more of the economic and social value of recycling here at home.”
Enviroo is currently constructing its £60 million advanced mechanical recycling facility at Peel NRE’s Protos Plastic Park near Ellesmere Port, which will produce 18,000 tonnes of food grade rPET pellet per annum at full capacity and serves as the cost and output benchmark for the white paper’s investment modelling.
