Raw material created from recycled plastic currently cannot compete with virgin oil or gas-based plastic.
The myth that with only 9% of annual plastic waste recycled we can get out of a growing crisis of plastic pollution does not add up.
Around 85% of plastic packaging worldwide ends up in landfills. In the United States, the world’s biggest plastic polluter, only about 5 percent of the more than 50 million tons of plastic waste produced in households was recycled in 2021, according to Greenpeace.
Plastic production will triple worldwide by 2060 and plastics from oil or gas are a growing source of pollution. Much of these also ends up in the oceans and seriously affect marine life.
Promises by major plastics producers such as Nestlé and Danone to promote recycling and including more recycled plastic in their containers have been largely unfulfilled.
The pressure group of plasticsalong with supermarkets in countries from Austria to Spain, sometimes shirk this responsibility, lobbying against deposit-return schemes, which include plastic bottles.
But there is a ray of hope: new universal regulations for plastics are being negotiated to optimize production, use and reuse, using a circular economy model.
Separating seven types of plastic does not work
Most plastic packaging is made from seven grades of plastic, largely incompatible with each other and expensive to sort for recycling.
Aside from PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, the world’s most common plastic labeled 1, and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which carries the symbol 2, five other types of plastic can also be collected, but are rarely recycled , according to Greenpeace.
PET is the most recyclable plastic. The harder plastics, from 3 to 7, do not have a very wide market due to their low value.
“It’s hard to reprocess and sort all the plastic,” said Lisa Ramsden, senior plastics activist at Greenpeace USA. Mixed recycling bins contain a large amount of contaminants that make the plastic non-recyclable, she added.
“Recycling is not the problem, it’s the plastics,” Ramsden explained. Since new virgin plastic is often cheaper than recycled material, plastic recycling is not economical, he said.
Virgin plastic is too cheap
Post-consumer plastic resin created from recycled material is being undermined by cheaper raw materials, limiting the market for recycled plastics.
While the price of virgin plastic depends on fluctuating oil and gas prices, these fossil fuels are often subsidized. According to Sander Defruyt, who leads the New Plastics Economy initiative at the US NGO Ellen MacArthur Foundation, recycled plastic would be more competitive if fossil fuel subsidies were phased out.
“Flexible” lightweight packaging on the rise, but not recyclable
Lightweight packs, which keep foods like sandwiches, chips and chocolate bars cool, make up about 40% of the world’s plastic packaging, according to Defruyt.
Known as flexible packaging, they are single-use, lightweight, and multi-layered. They are used to wrap around 215 billion products in the UK alone. Only about five European countries are trying to recycle these packages, DeFruyt noted.
Part of the problem is their multi-layer composition that is sometimes coated with aluminum foil, making it very expensive to separate into recyclable parts. Flexible packaging is also often “super contaminated” with food waste, which also makes it impossible to recycle, Defruyt noted.
The packaging industry claims that flexible packaging has environmental benefits, as it is lighter than plastics and causes fewer emissions during transport. At the same time, they keep food fresh for longer.
In a 2022 survey of more than 23,000 people in 34 countries, nearly 80% would support banning types of plastic that cannot be easily recycled. The EU has taken some steps in this direction, banning 10 single-use plastic products.
(rmr/rr)