The Plastics Recycling Council have just launched a project to generate a range of standards for the plastics recycling industry. The BPF Recycling Council Ltd is the not-for-profit company that represents the UK plastics recycling industry. This industry converts over 400,000 tonnes of waste plastic into new products every year. Funded by the Department of Trade & Industry, Biffaward, EMR and ICL, the project aims to create new standards for the waste plastic which is the feedstock for plastics recyclers. It will also generate a framework whereby recyclate can be categorised according to its technical performance. The BPF Recycling Council believes that the lack of recognised standards has been clearly identified as a barrier to many areas of growth of the plastics recycling industries. Further UK and EU legislation is scheduled for introduction over the next decade which will require a 300% increase in the volume of post-use plastics recycling. Without these standards, these new targets will be difficult to achieve. The paper, glass, metals and other materials recycling industries already have internationally recognised grades of sorted waste, but plastics recycling, being a relatively new industry, has not yet developed standards for waste. The project will develop standards that will allow waste generators and merchants to sort plastics waste to predetermined standards, and the recyclers will be able to specify the waste and scrap that they need for recycling. The second standard will be a framework, agreed by the plastics processing industries who buy recyclate from the plastics recyclers. It will enable plastics recyclers to generate their own technical data sheets to an accepted format with known data and tolerances that the processing industries demand