The UK Treasury has recently announced that it will conduct a consultation on changes to the plastic packaging tax, with the aim of encouraging investment in the field of chemical recycling. The UK plastic packaging tax will take effect from April 1, 2022, and plastic packaging produced domestically or imported into the UK with less than 30% recycled content (10 tons) must pay a tax of £ 200 per ton. Starting from April 1st this year, the plastic packaging tax rate levied by the UK has risen to £ 210.82 per ton.
In addition, the government will conduct a consultation on calculating the recycled content from chemical recycling in packaging through the conservation of quality method. The Ministry of Finance believes that conservation of quality can be used to calculate the chemical recovery and regeneration content, providing a calculation method for the 30% threshold.
Conservation of mass is a process of calculating the amount of chemical recovered raw materials used in a final product, which may include recycled and native raw materials, or bio based materials. Physical recycling does not require mass conservation, as the sorting, processing, and adoption of its materials are easily identifiable (organized and translated from Letsrecycle. com).
In the first year of plastic tax implementation, the UK collected £ 208 million and is expected to receive a total of £ 277 million in taxes throughout the year.