Celebrating 20Years of
Farm Plastic Collection
and Long Relationship with the
Largest UK Recycler of Farm Waste

Birch Farm Plastics is a farming family business with the second generation now at the helm. The business was established in 1989 by Peter and Marilyn Birch to collect waste farm plastic from a limited geographical area in Wales. With over twenty years of farming experience they decided to diversify to a project that could run alongside the farming enterprise and possibly allow their children to be involved.
Processing 20 tonnes in their first year, the Birches have since expanded to collect over 5000 tonnes in 2008 for recycling. They are now the sole supplier of waste agricultural film to British Polythene Industries (BPI) for the whole of the UK.
The company currently has a network of collection Agents covering the UK. An additional network of collection centres also enables customers to drop off smaller quantities. These centres are placed at strategic locations to bulk up farm plastic for direct transport to the reprocessing facility at BPI. Birch Farm Plastics currently collects from over 6000 farms in Wales alone.

“The business of full time farming and part time plastic collection has revolved a complete circle to becoming part time farmers and full time plastic collectors” comments Cheryl Birch.
“Farmers have proven they care for the environment, with many of our customers having disposed of their plastic waste in the proper manner for over 15 years prior to the current regulations”.

Birch Farm Plastics sorting and baling site is near Swansea in South Wales. Each lorry is specially adapted with self loading and weigh facilities so that each grabful can be weighed at each farm for the farmer to decide how much waste he or she would like taken away on each collection. Once collected, the waste is then sorted and baled into 1.25 t bales and transported to BPI for reprocessing.
Core items for recycling include silage wrap, silage sheeting, feed/sawdust bags, polytunnel and crop film and fertilizer bags. They will also collect netting/string/triple rinsed containers but these are not currently recycled by BPI.

Help and Support - all part of the service.

Birch Farm Plastics is always looking at ways of helping farmers to make it easier to recover waste plastics and reduce costs of responsible disposal. Getting together with neighbours etc can reduce costs - and minimising the plastics contamination by changing ways of storing and using bales can also help.
Plastic collected under the BFPC scheme does not have to be clean as the BPI plants are structured to deal with contaminated polythene.
“We do try and encourage farmers to keep plastic away from muck if possible- cleaner plastic weighs less and brings down costs to both customer and reprocessor, but as farmers we do appreciate that farm plastic is dirty by nature.”

Farmers are also supported in complying with the law through the processing of waste transfer notes and helpful free advice. Birch Farm Plastics regularly liaise with the Environment Agency to ensure farmers stay fully up to date of any change in regulations.

From Useless to Useful

The waste collected and sorted by Birch Farm Plastics is taken to British Polythene Industries (BPI) in Wales and Scotland- the largest re-processor of agricultural waste in the UK. The waste is then transformed into pellets, which are then used to produce pit liners, refuse bags and the hardwearing plastic lumber used for the manufacturing of street and garden furniture, fencing etc.

The working partnership between the Birches and BPI is all about two long established companies getting together to provide a sustainable future for the recovery and recycling of agricultural waste.

As Europe’s largest recycler of waste polythene in Europe, bpi.recycled products currently reprocesses over 70,000 tonnes of Industrial, Distribution, Farm and general scrap each year - using it to create new products such as street furniture, refuse sacks and building supplies. Waste farm plastic like used bale wrap, fertiliser bags and crop film supplied by Birch Farm Plastics is ideal due to its inherent strength. BPI operates dedicated agricultural waste recycling facilities in Dumfries and Rhymney – South Wales.
Birch Farm Plastics have provided thousands of tonnes of waste farm plastics to our recycling plants and we look forward to working with the Birch family to further promote environmentally friendly disposal of farm plastics.
Not content to stop there, bpi agri is also taking steps to reduce the amount of waste its products create in the first place. Its Silotite PRO bale wrap, which is currently undergoing final field trials, offers all the performance of its world leading Silotite product but from a thinner film thickness. The net result is that less film by volume is required to wrap a bale and so less film requires recycling after use.
There’s no doubt about it. When it comes to helping farmers to minimise their environmental impact and their waste stream contribution, British Polythene Industries is definitely doing its part.

PRESS RELEASE

29th March 2006

BPI announces major expansion of its
farm plastic recycling facility in Dumfries

British Polythene Industries PLC (BPI) has today announced a major new investment at a cost of some £2 million at its farm plastic recycling facility in Dumfries with the installation of a second wash plant which will double its capacity. The new plant, which is due to be commissioned in June this year, will allow Dumfries to process a further 15,000 tonnes per year of agricultural waste plastic taking its total capacity to 30,000 tonnes.

The investment comes in response to the growing pressure from farmers for outlets to recycle their waste plastic in advance of the new waste controls on farms due to come into force in late Spring of this year. In addition the recent announcement by DEFRA that the Government has decided to implement statutory Producer Responsibility regulations in respect of non-packaging farm plastics has underpinned the demand for new recycling capacity in the UK.

Commenting on the recent announcement by DEFRA, Andrew Green, Managing Director of bpi.recycled products, confirmed: "We are delighted that in response to their recent consultation DEFRA have accepted the case for statutory regulations in this area. Since the collapse of our voluntary industry scheme, Farm Films Producers' Group, 10 years ago, we have always maintained that the most efficient and lowest cost way to ensure the recycling of plastics from farms was via a mandatory national framework. To a large extent our investment is ahead of a market which will only become sustainable once these regulations come into force. However the announcement from DEFRA has given us the confidence to take a long-term view of further investment in this sector and to subsidise its operation until the market has developed.

BPI has no plans to collect waste farm plastics itself. It has worked with the Irish Farm Films Producers Group (IFFPG) in the Irish Republic for many years and for the collection of waste farm plastic in the UK BPI has chosen to work specifically with Birch Farm Plastics who are extending their collection activity from their current base in Wales and the Border Counties to the UK as a whole. According to Andrew Green , the Birch family have been involved in collecting farm plastic waste for over 16 years and are probably the most experienced collectors in the country. They have a very efficient, low-cost collection system which is extremely popular amongst the farmers who use their services. We are delighted to be working with them again.

Andrew Green added: This is the first phase of our plans substantially to increase both the volume and types of waste farm plastic we recycle and we are currently considering further similar investments in our plant in South Wales and in the Irish Republic.

BPI is the largest producer of polythene film products in Europe and a leading producer of agricultural and horticultural plastic films which it sells worldwide. BPI is also the largest recycler of polythene film in Europe .

BPI established their recycling facility in Dumfries in 1995 to recycle waste arising from the Farm Film Producers Group. This was a voluntary industry scheme set up by the major producers and suppliers of farm films into the UK market. This was a levy based scheme where an Environmental Protection Contribution of 100/tonne was applied to the sale of silage wrap to fund its eventual recycling. In its first year of operation the scheme collected 4,000 tonnes of waste plastic from 5,000 farms across the UK. The scheme collapsed in 1996 when two importers chose not to pay the levy as a way of undercutting the market to gain market share.

Since 1996 the plant at Dumfries has recycled agricultural waste plastic predominantly from overseas, principally from the Irish Republic, States of Jersey, Norway, Benelux and Germany .

Dumfries recycles mainly used silage wrap and sheet but can also recycle crop covers, mulch films, tunnel greenhouse films, tree guards, plastic cores and animal feed sacks. It is evaluating the viability of recycling fertiliser sacks and rigid containers.

Dumfries recycles these materials into its range of award-winning Plaswood sustainable wood-substitute products which are used as park and garden furniture, street and countryside signs, bollards and marine decking.