CAN PLASTICS BE RECYCLED?

• In the United States, which is by far the world’s biggest plastics polluter, only around 5% of over 50 million tons of plastic waste produced by households in 2021 was recycled, according to Greenpeace
• With plastic production set to triple globally by 2060, plastics made primarily from oil or gas are a growing source of the carbon pollution fuelling climate change. Much is also ending up in oceans and severely impacting marine life
• Promises by major plastics producers like Nestle and Danone to promote recycling and include more recycled plastic in their containers have been mostly broken
• The plastics lobby, along with supermarkets in countries from Austria to Spain, sometimes avoid this responsibility by lobbying against deposit return schemes that include plastic bottles
• New universal plastic regulations are currently being negotiated as part of a global plastics treaty aiming to streamline the production, use and reuse of plastic using a circular economy model
• Circular product design also relies on the myth of recycling, which in its current guise is doing little to ease a mounting plastics crisis

• Most plastic packaging is produced from seven grades of plastic that are largely incompatible with each other, and are costly to sort for recycling
• Apart from PET, or Polyethylene terephthalate, the world’s most common plastic labelled with a #1, and high-density Polyethylene (HDPE), which carries the #2 symbol, five other plastic types might be collected but are rarely recycled, say Greenpeace
• PET is the most recyclable plastic and there is a strong market for its byproduct used to make drink bottles, food containers or fibers for clothes
• Harder plastics numbered 3-7 have a very small market since the value of the raw material is lower than the cost of recycling.
• The post-consumer plastic resin created from recycled material is being undercut by cheaper prime material, limiting the market for recycled plastics
• Reporting by New York-based market analysts S&P Global, shows demand for raw recycled plastic slowing due, among other factors, to rising transport costs for recycling businesses in Asia and a slowdown in the construction sector that creates plastic building materials
• Ironically, plastic bag bans in Africa and Asia have limited the amount of feed material, which, in addition to low recycling rates globally, is also raising the price of recycled material
• While the price of virgin plastic is at the whim of 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-based non-profit, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, recycled plastic would be more competitive if fossil fuel subsidies were phased out
• 4. Flexible Packaging
• The lightweight packets that keep food and snacks likes chips or chocolate bars fresh, constitute around 40% of the world’s plastic packaging, according to Defruyt
• The lightweight, multi-layered single-use packets are used to wrap around 215 billion products in the UK alone
• Only around five European countries are currently attempting to recycle these packets, noted DeFruyt
• In the US, flexible packaging made up only 2% of residential recycling in 2020
• Part of the problem is their multi-layered composition that is sometimes lined with 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
• The packaging industry claims that flexible packaging has environmental benefits as it’s lighter than more rigid plastics and causes less transport emissions while also keeping food fresher for longer
• Efforts by the flexible packaging industry to make the packets part of a circular economy are doing little to raise recycling rates