RECOUP is a charity and leading authority providing expertise and guidance across the plastics recycling value chain. Built on a network of valued members, collaboration is central to RECOUP’s activities. The organisation is committed to securing sustainable, circular, and practical solutions for plastic resources both in the UK and worldwide.

The RECOUP Citizen & Stakeholder Engagement team provide support and education to citizens and the wider plastics recycling industry to improve understanding to all about recycling. With 30 years of experience, RECOUP offer a holistic view of behavioural insights and requirements to improve recycling.

Pledge2Recycle Plastics works to reduce consumer confusion around plastic recycling. RECOUP act as a catalyst between the plastics resource and recycling industry and citizens. The team provide and support communications on what can be recycled locally and how best to prepare plastic packaging for collection. The Pledge2Recycle Plastics programme explains the recycling process and demonstrates a range of product made from recycled plastics.

The RECOUP team understand the recycling system from collection to reprocessing, particularly at the sorting stage and how a MRF operates to sort and detect plastic packaging.

RecyClass Pack Certification
RecyClass is run exclusively by RECOUP for the UK and is the first approved certification system for plastic packaging recyclability

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
RECOUP has established a working group and is formalising a strategy to look at how the organisation can build LCA capability to assist members and the wider industry to better inform decision making related to product design in order that decisions are based on environmentally sound evidence rather than emotion. LCA is a tool to assess the environmental impact of products, goods, and services across their life cycle from raw material extraction through to end of life. The intention of an LCA is not only to provide data on environmental performance but to facilitate decisions. LCA has become an increasingly popular tool to identify significant areas of impact for improvement, avoid unintended consequences and to explore future scenarios based on alternatives. RECOUP believe that the use of LCA will enable informed evidence-based decisions on product development and design, support supply chain and procurement decisions, track performance over time of packaging changes, improve overall environmental outcomes in line with strategy and policy, and challenge misinformation and greenwash.