The “Bag2Bag” recycling trial launched by Veolia United Kingdom (London / UK; www.veolia.co.uk), a subsidiary of Veolia Group (Paris / France; www.veolia.com), has come full circle. Under the scheme, people living in London’s Southwark area and participating in the programme deposited used plastic bags at specific collection points. The bags were then brought by Veolia for reprocessing – carried out by CeDo (Telford / UK; www.cedo.com) at its plant in Telford. After being washed and shredded into pellets, the former are then turned into film used for refuse bags and redistributed among “Bag2Bag” participants.

The trial scheme has already transformed about 1,000 t of plastic bags into 500,000 refuse sacks. “If this trial is successful, we hope to roll it out to other local authorities,” said Veolia UK technical director Richard Kirkman.