From the clear covering on your microwave meal to the flimsy bread bag lying on the kitchen counter, plastic film is notoriously tricky to recycle. But what if those annoying bits of plastic waste could be put to better use?

This hard-to-reycle plastic could be transformed, potentially into a source of fuel, but the UK’s current recycling rules make it difficult for companies to innovate and experiment.

The main legal barrier is the definition of recycling itself. Under the rules UK waste law is built on, recycling cannot include turning waste into anything that will be used as fuel. A separate category for the plastics that are the hardest to recycle, recognising fuel made from waste that would otherwise be burned, would give companies more scope to experiment with new ways to process it.

As a legal researcher, I study how the law decides what counts as recycling. My work raises a simple question. If the rules allowed it, could dealing with one problem, plastic waste, also help ease another, our dependence on imported fuel?

In Darlington in north-east England, a chemical recycling company has received planning permission for what it describes as the UK’s first large-scale plant for recycling plastic film. The company, Endolys, plans to take up to 120,000 tonnes a year of waste plastic film, such as bread bags, wrappers and pouches, and turn it into so-called........

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