That’s the general consensus among some of Europe’s leading plastic industry
commentators — the very people working to reshape the industry.
While plastic in its myriad forms is ingrained in every aspect of our life,
‘plastiphobia’ has entered the vernacular as a condition, and regulators are
cracking down hard on an industry that already faces a number of complex
challenges.
But plastiphobia shouldn’t be a thing. Plastic should not be demonised; rather,
it should be treated like the crux of modern living that it is. The problem is
not with plastic per se, rather the recycling of plastic and its inappropriate
usage.
The plastics industry has become acutely self-aware, and some might even say
introspective. Directive targets must be met; new processes researched,
developed and launched; and consumer education delivered and expectations met.
And looming over all of this is the spectre of sustainability, and the
demonisation of plastics.
Speaking at Circularity for Polymers: The ICIS Recycling
Conference in Berlin
earlier this month, International E-Chem Chairman Paul Hodges said
there’s an awful lot of work to do in a very limited time.
“It’s very clear there’s a paradigm shift going on in the industry. Companies
are waking up to the fact that waste
plastics
are a really big issue — one that’s not going to go away. Single-use
plastics
are going to be in the firing line for the next few years — and business models
simply must change,” he emphasised.
Hodges added that at the core of the shift required is the fact that people
don’t know how to recycle plastics, but they do understand why we need to: “We
haven’t got the technology available. We haven’t got the collection
processes
setup. We need to move away from throwing rubbish away at waste sites and focus
instead on developing resource centres, based on a distributed network of local
chemical
recycling
plants.”
That move to smaller, local chemical recycling plants — which are more efficient
and effective at separating out the different types of plastic to help better
achieve the dream of a circular economy — is certainly on the horizon, yet still
only a nascent industry.
Richard Daley, Managing Director of ReNew ELP, is
at the forefront of chemical recycling. The company is in the final stages of
development on the first of four chemical recycling processing lines, with each
line processing 20,000 tonnes a year. Its Cat-HTR™ technology utilises what
Daley describes as “a unique, hydrothermal upgrading process, using
supercritical water to break down plastics into reusable, valuable chemicals and
oils.”
Interestingly, target feedstock for processing is the residual plastic after
mechanical recycling has taken place — such as flexible, multi-layer films — and
ReNew ELP sees itself as complementary to the mechanical recycling process.
Echoing Daley, ICIS’ Senior Editor of
Recycling, Mark Victory, said: “Chemical recovery is better in theory, but
there are issues with cost and yield. In theory, it’s good, but there are still
the same challenges of collection, and it will be five to ten years — an
optimistic estimate — before we see large—scale chemical recovery.”
Victory identified another hurdle, in that collection is simply not big enough.
He says local authorities — where most responsibility for household waste
collection lies — have been underfunded since the global economic downturn more
than a decade ago, and investment in infrastructure has not kept pace with the
growing complexity of packaging as a result. And that domestic issue is further
exacerbated by China’s decision to stop taking waste plastics from the rest
of the
world.
“Investment in waste collection hasn’t kept pace with the increasing complexity
of packaging,” Victory explained. “And since China stopped accepting waste,
there’s more contamination in our domestic recycling — wastage rates have
increased; China used to take the lower-quality waste material — which they
could use in industries such as textile — but is now being incorporated into
domestic bales. The scale of demand and size of the undersupply is also meaning
material is having to be produced at maximum capacity and stretched further,
which also has an impact on contamination levels. In recycled PET, for example,
we’ve seen wastage rates increase from 25 percent in 2009 to 30-35 percent,
currently.”
Hodges added that what the industry urgently needs is project teams to work out
how to produce more sustainable product and better recycling collection and
processing facilities.
“If we don’t do [work this out], brand owners are going to say, ‘look, we’ve
made a commitment to the consumers to have done this by 2025. You’re not moving,
so we’re going to have to do something else.’ We have six years to work this out
— and we don’t know what to do.”
Hodges feels the brand owners that have committed to the 2025
deadline
need reassurance from the plastics industry: “We need to reach out to brand
owners and say we have got the technology sorted out, the business model sorted
out and the finance sorted out; so, trust us — we will now deliver so you can
deliver what you need to do,” he said.
ICIS’ Senior Analyst of Plastics Recycling, Helen McGeough, explained:
“Plastic packaging is more complex than ever before; modern packaging has moved
beyond just functionality to a marketing tool. But we need to strip it back to a
simpler level and encourage recycling concepts at the design stage.
“The EU has set the bar high with the Single-Use Plastic Directive,
requiring higher collection rates even with 2018 recovery rates for PET bottles
in Europe at 63 percent, and 55 percent in the UK. The European country PET
collection rates vary across member states, reflecting the differences in
systems, consumer participation and government ability to prioritise investment
in waste management. This lack of standardisation in everything from waste
infrastructure to final rPET product specification continue to present as many
challenges as opportunities for one of the most developed recycling markets in
the plastic industry,” McGeough added.
Victory stated that: “The sector needs heavy investment, to catch up across the
entire chain. There’s no point in everyone wanting to recycle if the
infrastructure isn’t there. We are relying on people to understand and embrace
recycling systems — which is hard to predict. There’s a strong education element
to it. For most people, plastic is simply plastic — they are unaware of the
different types and what to do with it.”
Hodges concurred on the need for investment, emphatically suggesting the
industry needs to provide funding: “The amounts the industry is committing to
this sea change is next to nothing — 25 million here, ten million there. Come
on, guys — you know we’re talking about a hundred billion industry here. You
can’t start with pocket money!”
Hodges sees the biggest industry challenge — and, perhaps, opportunity — as the
shift from massive mechanical recycling plants to smaller, local chemical
recycling plants. “The new industry business model is small scale and local;
whereas for the last 30 to 40 years, all we’ve talked about is massive and
global — and this is a complete game changer,” he concluded.
Source: Sustainable Brands – Latest News
