In the below, Professor Edward Kosior identifies three key components of packaging that are poised to make or break brand owners’ recycling targets. He sounds a clear warning about what needs to happen.
The latest report on the climate crisis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tolls a resounding warning bell to the world, highlighting the dire consequences if we don’t drastically address the issue of CO2e in our atmosphere.
Poignantly, the report reminds us that we will not have this time again, where we know what the situation is so conclusively. This scientific consensus, combined with the fact that the majority of climate solutions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change exist, provides a unique opportunity for us to address the gaps and take action.
The plastics and packaging industry can make a very significant contribution by boosting efforts to reduce the CO2e associated with their sector. Why? Because each tonne of recycled plastic saves at least one tonne of CO2. A recycling rate of 50 percent for plastic packaging would save more than 70Million tonnes of CO2e per annum. How? The easiest and most direct way is to increase the rate of recycling of plastics and packaging as soon as possible.
Of course this means change and adaptation for an industry that has long standing and cost efficient practices that did not consider CO2 emissions. Yet, the stability of our societies and our very survival depends on dramatically reducing CO2 emissions. Within the context of plastics packaging we need to invest in design of easy-to-recycle packaging that has circularity at its heart with a clear focus on CO2e.
Right now if we applied our very best current practices of collecting, sorting and recycling, we still could only recover typically 60 percent of our plastic packaging.
Instead of trying to align with what brand owners and supermarkets put back into the waste stream for recycling, we need to go back to the packaging design drawing board and produce packaging that can be recycled simply and productively by recycling businesses. This means eliminating “difficult to recycle” packaging and optimising the composition, such as low or no pigmentation, mono construction through to readily removable adhesives and labels
Ultimately, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance this is no tall order, so let’s unpack this further.
The biggest market for plastics is food packaging - as such food-grade compliance is crucial. To achieve this we must simplify recycling rather than look to over-complex technologies to solve our challenges. Without the need to go down any sophisticated, costly route there are three components in packaging that could transform the way packaging is recycled.
In the true sense of a circular economy one can only recycle what is put out by the retailers and adhesives, labels and pigmentation limit re-use and therefore impede true circularity. These might seem like small details when in fact all three play a pivotal role in whether a pack is recycled back into high-quality packaging or turned into low-value recyclates or worse, sent to landfill.
Sticking with it
The aggressive glues with a range of additives are particularly an issue for recyclers of PET, PP and HDPE packaging as these materials can accumulate in the recycled materials as unintentionaly added substances. Some options such as self-peeling labels that remove the adhesive and the label during washing stages of recycling are already on the market. Going further we need to ensure the inks on the labels don’t bleed into the water used in the washing stages of recycling. The labels themselves need to be readily separated by logical separation steps such as sink/float systems and recycled to avoid any unwanted waste.
The colour of change
Coloured recycled plastics have a lower value and are much less likely to be recycled into food-grade packaging due to the colour matching needs for specific packaging. Yet, as mentioned earlier, food packaging is plastics’ biggest market so it stands to reason that if we can readily differentiate food from non-food packaging we can have a huge impact on recycled plastics.
One simple solution would be to use colours to speed the process up.
Pigments are possibly the most contentious yet easily reversible element of today’s packaging and we need to flip the way we use them. Instead of using colours to tell a brand story and create on-shelf standout, colours could be put to better use if they were to define which category the product contained within belongs to. In this scenario all foods would be contained in natural or white packaging. Non-foods would be in pastel coloured packaging that would use a smaller concentration of pigments and all hazardous products would be in black (carbon black or detectable black) plastic.
Sorting by transparent, pastel and black would simplify recyclers lives as they could use their well-established, accurate and low-cost automatic sorting technology that relies on the visible light spectrum and cameras for detection.
Immediate actions for a better future
If we could focus on these three elements we would already make great in-roads. What we don’t need is more time-consuming research that is not connected to current problems and tasks that need resolution. We literally don’t have the time. We now need to apply common sense and the effective technologies we already have to hand. Despite the many good innovations coming on stream it would be fair to say that the majority of packaging is still being designed to be processed only once and this needs to change. Recycling-friendly formulations are needed and reducing pigments along with recycling-positive labels and adhesives, will have a transformational effect.
Of course we also need to enhance collection of recyclable packaging to divert it from the growing waste-to-energy destinations and we need to remove the numerous administrative blockages stopping effective and safe recycling. Still - we can’t wait for the perfect moment when everything falls into place - we need to keep pushing forward with what we can do today.
We need to keep stretching our boundaries without losing track of what we can do immediately to make a difference. As the IPCC report points out, apathy is our biggest enemy. We must take action now to limit global warming to below 1.5°C by making simple and cost effective changes, otherwise current and future generations will end up living in a far hotter and profoundly different world to the one we currently know.
Notes:
Global plastics production is 350 Mtonnes
40% is packaging = 140Mtpa
50% recycling rate =70Mtpa
CO2 savings = 70MTpa