A good progress was made in mechanical recycling which saw a huge 24% increase, while energy recovery rose by just over 4.5%. Overall, the proportion of plastics recovered rose 3% in the same time period, a reflection of the continuing decoupling of consumption from associated waste. At the recent Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC) 2009 in Orlando, Florida innovative recycle stream separation and sorting solutions developed in Europe were much discussed topics of interest.