Interview
and they have made a start with the winter package. As regards to the bigger issue of the PPWR, well at least when we get to 2030, there will be minimum mandatory quotas for recycled plastics for example, that can only be a good thing. Unfortunately in the UK, there’s no enthusiasm for that kind of thing. We’ve got our major investment at Leamington Spa with our rigid pp plant, we’ve got our super fl exible fi lms recycling plant, the only plant in the UK actually that’s realistically, recycling thousands of tons of PCR, including front of store. So yeah, we’re ahead of it. I just want to talk about the whole issue, really, of sustainability and why it is so important, both for Amcor and for our customers, because whilst there may be a failure to deliver eff ective strategy by government, that is going to give what everybody wants, we as Amcor and I know our customers who we are in partnership with, we’re delivering sustainability. My message is in the UK, don’t rely on government to provide new regulation, because I don’t think it’s going to come. So if we’re going to achieve our sustainability goals, which we desperately want to, in partnership with our customers, we’ve got to do it ourselves. Don’t rely on anybody else. Get on and get it done. How long have I been in the industry? Far too long for my own good. Let’s put it like this. I was MD of a recycling business in 1996/97, when we put the fi rst wash plant, for polythene fi lm in, and we were taking supermarkets back at store waste and here we are, hundreds of years later, we’ve just put another new wash plant in, in the same place, totally diff erent to the old one, the technology’s moved on, but we’re still washing and recycling supermarket waste. So the overall principles don’t change, it’s just nowadays there’s a lot more emphasis on plastic recycling Let me give you an example, I was on the John Selwyn Gummer, now Lord Deben, SEQUOIA Industry Consultation body, when the original packaging waste regulations were set up in 1997, when the Packaging Waste Regulations became law. We had this little committee working for the minister, working out how the regulation should look. In those days, I checked my notes, we thought that the total amount of plastic that would be recovered and recycled in year one was 50,000 tons. And today, we’re doing over a million tons. So it does evolve. The problem at the moment is it’s evolving in the wrong way. It’s all being exported, which is a terrible shame. Because plastic is a valuable resource, we should be recycling it in the UK and reusing it in the UK to replace virgin polymer. What in fact we’re doing, in a lot of cases, is putting it in a container and sending it overseas. And that is not sustainable in the long term.
www.convertermag.com
February 2026
19
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