‘It’s time for a reuse revolution’, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) has said following the publication of its new report.
The study was developed in partnership with Systemiq and Eunomia, with input from more than 60 organisations including the European Investment Bank, national governments, reuse experts, and major brands and retailers such as Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, and Unilever.
It uses advanced modelling that quantifies the performance of return models across three theoretical scenarios, using France as a representative geography. The EMF modelled four returnable packaging applications and their single-use equivalents: beverages, personal care, fresh food, and food cupboard. The three scenarios considered are system change, a scaled, shared, and standardised return system; collaborative approach, an established reuse system with potential to scale further; and fragmented effort, a low scaled and fragmented return system. These scenarios were then characterised according to three system variables: their scale and shared infrastructure; the type of packaging system; and the return rate and average number of loops.
In the best-case scenario, system change, reuse packaging has around 40% market share, infrastructure is highly shared, packaging is pooled, and return rate is 95%, enabling packaging to be reused around 15 times. Under the collaborative approach scenario, the market share is around 10%, there is some sharing of infrastructure, packaging is pooled, and there is a 90% return rate, with around 10 loops. In the fragmented effort scenario, the market share is 2%, infrastructure is fragmented, packaging is bespoke, and the return rate is 80%, allowing for only five loops.
Results show that reuse can be cost competitive with single-use packaging under the system change scenario. In this best-case scenario, costs for returnable beverage bottles are 6% lower than single-use, and 10% cheaper for personal care bottles. For fresh food and food cupboard applications, the system change scenario is only 1% and 3% more expensive.
Under a fragmented effort scenario, on the other hand, returnable beverage bottles are 97% more expensive, with personal care bottles 61% more expensive, as well as fresh food (123%), and food cupboard (141%) applications.
In terms of environmental impact, the system change scenario reduces greenhouse gas emissions and water use by 35% to 69% across applications, and material use by 45% to 75%.
“Scaling reuse will be a major transition and won’t happen overnight,” said Sander Defruyt, plastics initiative lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “This analytical study gives us greater insight into the key drivers that affect the environmental and economic performance of return systems. Yet, it doesn’t have all the answers. We now need to see more research and groundwork in specific geographies and sectors to determine the best course of action and make return models at scale a reality.”
To drive global change, the foundation is calling on leaders across the private, public and finance sectors, to take a fresh approach to expand a reuse revolution through shared infrastructure, packaging standardisation, and to work collaboratively to reach high return rates. Its research suggests that without a significant shift towards reuse, worldwide virgin plastic use in packaging is unlikely to decrease below today’s levels before 2050.