Recycle to Read and Products of Change have kicked off a new series of webinars diving into the ongoing work and research into a working, brand agnostic collection and recycling system for broken and unwanted plastic toys.

Informed by Recycle to Read’s recent campaign with the UK supermarket, Tesco in which broken toy collection bins were deployed across Tesco stores over Sussex, and encouraged by the campaign’s positive results, work is continuing along a pathway to building a circular system for broken and unwanted toys and divert them from landfill.

The initiative is currently in research and development phase, bringing in experts in waste management and recycling processes to offer insight into the advances made in both mechanical and non-mechanical recycling of hard plastics. 

In the first in a scheduled series of webinar updates, last week, Recycle to Read’s Katy Newnham and David Ingham introduced the work and ongoing partnership with the UK waste management company, Impact Recycling and the UK plastics research organisation, WRAP who each shared insight and inside information into the processes and complexities of plastic recycling, as well as the advances that are being made here in the UK when it comes to processing the hard-to-recycle plastic items such as toys.

It’s widely recognised that toys are distinctly hard to recycle owing to the multiple materials often used in many products and the subsequent lack of investment by the waste management industry, so far, to develop systems that can manage toys and similar complex plastic products as a result. 

“Most UK and international municipal recycling systems cannot currently accept non-packaging plastic items,” explained David Ingham, waste and recycling programmes manager at Wastebuster – the team behind the Recycle to Read campaign. 

“This is down to three key factors: the first being the use of multiple materials in the one product and the challenges this throws up within standard waste sorting systems; the focus of global policy on packaging recycling right now; and the subsequent lack of investment into systems for handling toys and other complex plastic products.”

However, recognising many of the roadblocks currently in the way of municipal systems, toy industry leaders have started to create their own infrastructure to keep their materials in use through repair or reuse as well as recycling. These schemes are, however, still limited in terms of reach and scope of products they are applicable to (often limited to owned brands under the brand owner). 

“Recycle to Read has been established to tackle these issues,” said David. “One of the key aspects is an industry-wide collaboration and the co-development of an industry-wide, brand agnostic collection system.”

A key part to this work, states David, will be the co-collection and pre-sorting of toys for recycling and reuse. This includes tackling the issues that can be caused by toys containing electrical components which too often contaminate plastic recycling systems when they are disposed of incorrectly. Part of Wastebuster’s ongoing campaign includes how to raise the profile of the problem and the Extended Producer Responsibility systems that are in place for electrical waste right now in the UK.

Mechanical Recycling

David Walsh, ceo of Impact Recycling has been working with Recycle to Read for the past four years on planning a scheme for collecting and recycling plastic toys. 

“Working with Recycle to Read on a system that sorts out the plastics for us – separating products with electrical components and batteries – it has solved a major part of the supply chain problem,” said David. “And working with a supply chain that has sorted that out, it means that the toys we are left with will get recycled.

“If the rest of the waste industry had the same level of commitment to finding the solution as Recycle to Read does, a lot more general waste would be recycled.”

Drawing back the curtain on the processes being used at Impact Recycling, David talked webinar attendees through the chain of processing that collected plastics go through, from being shredded down and placed in the sink float to separating the density of the plastics, to being shredded down further into ‘regrind’ and being separated once more using Impact Recycling’s BOSS technology. 

David demystified the processes behind recycling plastics as he shone a light on some of the more technical aspects of turning regrind back into product. And it all comes down to something the industry calls ‘flow rate.’

“The flow rate is just the rate at which your PP and PE plastic flows when it’s melted – the speed at which it runs when it’s melted,” says David. “If you don’t have a specific speed when it’s melted, you can’t use it to make a specific product. Which is a big issue when you’re taking in toys… because every toy will be made with different flow rates.

“We have had to develop an additive – that is patented and a first of its kind – that allows us to homogenise all those flow rates into one flow rate for each customer. Consumer grade goods won’t take all the grooves and the roughness you see in the plastic lumber market, they need a very smooth product. And that is the key to us being able to truly recycle the materials coming into the yard, because if you can’t control the flow rate, really the only market open to you is plastic lumber.”

Non-Mechanical Recycling

Completing the webinar’s line-up of speakers, attention then shifted to the subject of Non-Mechanical Recycling, an equally crucial component to the wider conversation around plastic recycling.

Offering insight from the UK NGO, WRAP, senior specialist, Adam Herriott took the chance to showcase the development being made in non-mechanical recycling as WRAP continues its work to ‘redesign our plastics system.’ 

What followed was a dive into the world of polymers which saw Adam talk attendees through the various types of non-mechanical recycling, from depolymerisation and pyrolysis to purification and dissolution. Members keen to take this dive into the science can do so by accessing the webinar via Products of Change Resources.

“We are supportive of all these methods of recycling,” said Adam. “But they come with some large caveats. One of which is that non-mechanical recycling is not a silver bullet, it needs to work alongside other processes and infrastructure.

“It needs to work alongside mechanical recycling, advanced sorting, and other impact groups established to recapture materials.” 

As Recycle to Read continues its explorative dive into recycling systems for toys, the team will be keeping the Products of Change community and wider industry updated with an upcoming calendar of webinars looking into toy recyclability, producing toys for sustainability, frontier recycling (including how to recycle plush toys), toy packaging for reuse, and global toy reuse systems and markets.

The next webinar will take place this September and will explore the subject of Toy Recyclability in the UK and beyond.

Those wishing to discover more can access the Recycle to Read webinar via the Products of Change Resources page.