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Can We Make Plastic Less of a Problem?

When it comes to plastic waste and global warming, we all can use change to be hopeful about.

12/12/2022 | Jeff Jacobs, The Brand Protector

Can We Make Plastic Less of a Problem?

If you ask what the world’s most important climate goal is, many scientists will say limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). That’s why negotiations towards global agreements are going on at the United Nations right now, with attendees from some small island nations enthusiastically involved. For them, it’s personal — it’s about whether their homes will continue to exist.

Limiting warming will help save the world’s coral reefs, preserve the Arctic’s protective sea ice layer, and could avoid further destabilizing Antarctica and Greenland, and even holding off dramatic sea level rise. But with the world having already warmed by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial temperatures, achieving this goal is in serious doubt.

As you know, the problem starts with the fact that the plastics industry depends on largely non-renewable resources. More than ninety percent of global plastic production consists of primary plastics — newly manufactured, not recycled — made from petroleum products. This requires massive amounts  of energy and produces greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, emissions from plastic production could amount to 15 percent of the estimated carbon budget needed to keep global warming below 2.7 °F.

In addition to warming, it’s also a large waste management issue. “The sheer volume of waste that’s created is unlike any other supply chain issue,” says Katherine Locock, a polymer chemist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia.

In theory, many commonly used plastics can be recycled. But only about one-tenth of the plastics that have ever been produced have been recycled once, and only about 1 percent have been recycled twice. “It is cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it or reuse it,” says Kristian Syberg, who studies plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark. “That’s a systemic issue.”

One thing we can all do is take time to do a little better job of sorting our recyclables. But even with everyone doing that, the system is still in dire need of upgrade. In high-income countries, after the recycling bin is picked up, more sorting happens with the help of high-tech machines at large-scale recycling facilities. These facilities typically target the most commonly used plastic types, especially polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used to make drink and water bottles), high-density polyethylene (HDPE, for milk and shampoo bottles), and sometimes low-density polyethylene (LDPE, used for plastic carrier bags) or polypropylene (bottle caps and snack bags).

Even with diligent sorting, recycled plastic is almost always of lower quality than primary plastic. More than 10,000 different additives can be used to give plastics different colors and technical properties. Plastics of the same type often contain different combinations of additives, resulting in recycled material with unpredictable and suboptimal additives.

Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have shown that even if 80 percent of plastic in Switzerland was collected for recycling, at most only about 20 percent of it would wind up in recycled plastic products. “It’s not sufficient if we only collect more,” the study concludes. Without other changes to the plastic system, “we get secondary material which cannot be utilized.”

The HolyGrail 2.0 project — a collaboration between more than 160 companies and organizations involved in plastic packaging, facilitated by the European Brands Association— is piloting the use of digital watermarks in Europe. These are codes embedded in plastic packaging that can be read by specialized cameras in recycling facilities and contain information about the additives of a piece of plastic waste. Another approach is known as aligned design, which calls on plastics manufacturers to coordinate to make products with fewer types of plastic and use the same set of additives. Then recycling facilities would receive a larger volume of similar plastics, in turn yielding higher quality recycled plastics.

Here in the U.S., initial changes in the consumer market for plastics are beginning to roll out. But just like the promo industry, real changes must start with suppliers. In August, the Coca-Cola Company began packaging Sprite, its lemon-lime carbonated drink, in clear plastic bottles in North America, rather than the iconic green bottles it has used for 60 years. The goal, the company says, is to aid the recycling of its bottles back into bottles, rather than into other products that are harder to recycle. That, in turn, will help Coca-Cola to meet its own pledge to increase the amount of recycled content in its packaging. The move highlights what researchers say is key to increasing recycling rates: boosting market demand for secondary plastics.

“We really could solve this waste problem of plastics if the people making them need this waste as a feedstock,” says André Bardow, a chemical engineer at Swiss Institute of Technology. “And that makes me hopeful.” When it comes to plastic waste and global warming, we all can use change to be hopeful about.

Jeff Jacobs has been an expert in building brands and brand stewardship for 40 years, working in commercial television, Hollywood film and home video, publishing, and promotional brand merchandise. He’s a staunch advocate of consumer product safety and has a deep passion and belief regarding the issues surrounding compliance and corporate social responsibility. He retired as executive director of Quality Certification Alliance, the only non-profit dedicated to helping suppliers provide safe and compliant promotional products. Before that, he was director of brand merchandise for Michelin. Connect with Jeff on TwitterLinkedInInstagram, or read his latest musings on food, travel and social media on his personal blog jeffreypjacobs.com. Email jacobs.jeffreyp@gmail.com.
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