Public Funding for Sprcoe Limited

The UK government has committed to planting 1.5billion trees by 2050 in order to meet ambitious Net Zero targets. The majority of this planting will be funded by the UK taxpayer and undertaken by organisations such as Forestry England, Woodlands Scotland and the Woodland Trust. Currently plastic treeshelters are used to protect the tree for the first five years of its life. Without the shelter 70% of trees are likely to die before they can mature. The shelter requires to protect the tree for five years, before it is removed, collected and disposed of. While plastic treeshelters are relatively cheap (£1/unit), the collection can cost as much as £2, leading to a lifecycle cost of £3\. Many companies have developed biodegradable alternatives, however in order to gain biodegradable certification they must degrade within 90 days of being placed in their intented environment. As a result, the shelters degrade far too quickly, leading to premauture failure and lower tree yields. There is not currently a route to certification for "delayed biodegradability" This project brings together NexGen, who have developed a treeshelter which is designed to start degrading after 5 years before biodegrading into the forestry environment. The product is patent and feasibility testing shows it is biodegradable. The Sustainable Certifications Group will work with NexGen and Impact Solutions to develop and write a new certifications scheme, with Impact providing the technical evidence pack to allow the scheme to be ISO17065 accredited and gain international recognition. As a result of this project NexGen, and others, will be able to prove their biodegradable claims in a forestry environment, and allowing the UK taxpayer to save \>£1billion in collection and disposal costs over the next 30 years.

In 2019 the UK government announced plans to introduce a tax on all plastic packaging which does not contain at least 30% recycled content, now known as the "plastic tax". This tax, which will start in 2022 will impose a £200 tax, per tonne of plastic, on all brands placing plastic packaging in the marketplace, unless recycled content of over 30% is used. While this has the potential to generate significant revenue for HMRC, or increase the value of plastic recyclate, hence making a step change in the value of plastic recycling which will increase the numbers of plastic recyclers throughout the country, there is no current method to analyse the amount of recyclate within a plastic product. As a result, UK manufacturers, who can be audited via purchase records from HMRC, face competition from imports of plastic packaging from overseas where purchase records of recyclate cannot be verified, or from unscrupulous local operators who falsely declare the origins of their material. This project seeks to close this blind spot by providing an internationally recognised method/standard for determining the % content of recyclate within a plastic product, by bringing together the Scottish Plastic Recycling Centre of Excellence (SPRCOE) and the British Standards Institution (BSI), both of whom stand to gain from this new service/product, while also protecting the revenues of HMRC, support packaging manufacturers and kick start the plastic recycling industry in the UK.

This project is a critical step for the UK who will launch a plastic packaging tax in April 2022 on all plastic packaging which does not contain at least 30% recycled content. Without this project the government (HMRC) will potentially lose out on large tax revenues from importers of plastic products who will be able to avoid the tax. This will help to ensure the tax is enforceable, ensuring that recycled content is used in plastic packaging and helping the UK deliver on the Clean Growth Strategy and Net Zero ambitions. The project will also help the UK economy recover in a post COVID world. The COVID pandemic has affected the plastic recycling industry in the UK by disrupting their supplies of material, while also closing a number of their sales channels as UK manufacturing shut down. These shut downs have provided an opportunity to change the way the industry works and bounce back in a more sustainable fashion. In order to ensure this bounce back is sustainable, this standard is required to protect the sustainable business philosophy in the UK from fraudulently declared imports from abroad, and avoid UK recyclers missing out on the potentially huge sales increases they could otherwise expect to gain.