Professor Edward Kosior
UNEP – the United Nations Environment Program – has recently published an impactful report, laying out concrete practices, market shifts, and legislation they propose international policymakers implement to pursue an 80 percent reduction in global plastic pollution by 2040. What is most striking, having read the report, is the fact that none of this will be achievable without disrupting an industry that has long-standing and cost-efficient practices that did not take CO2 emissions into account.
Yet, these disruptions are crucial to the future of our planet. The plastics and packaging sector has the potential to make a very significant contribution to climate change goals by boosting efforts to reduce its CO2e. As it stands each ton of recycled plastic saves at least one ton of CO2. In the case of food-grade recycled Polypropylene (FGrPP), an estimated 1.6 tons of CO2e can be saved compared with virgin Polypropylene resin. Put another way a 20 ktpa plant would save 32.000 tons of CO2e a year.
The easiest and most direct way to achieve this would be to increase the rate of recycling of plastics and packaging as soon as possible. Something UNEP suggests as key market shifts to achieve their circular economy goals. From governmental support to drive reuse options and promoting recycling as a stable and profitable business venture through to enforcing design-for-recycling guidelines that they believe could increase the share of economically recyclable plastics from 21 to 50 percent.
Poignantly, the required critical choices and actions stand to have impacts now and for thousands of years to come. But these actions must be implemented immediately because adaptation options that are still feasible today will become constrained and less effective with increasing global warming. Which is why, within the context of plastics packaging, we must invest in design of easy-to-recycle packaging that has circularity at its heart with a clear focus on CO2e. Right now if we applied our very best current practices of collecting, sorting and recycling, we still could recover at least 60 percent of our plastic packaging which is a big step forward over what we currently achieve.
However, we do need to flip mindsets. Instead of trying to align with what brand owners and supermarkets put back into the waste stream for recycling, we need to go back to the packaging design drawing board and produce packaging that can be recycled simply and productively by recycling businesses. We can no longer afford the “luxury” of “difficult to recycle” packaging. By optimizing the composition, such as low or no pigmentation, mono-material construction through to readily removable adhesives, labels and inks we can already make an impactful difference. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance this is no tall order, so let’s unpack this further. The biggest market for consumer-focused plastics is food packaging – as such food-grade compliance for recycled materials is crucial.
Transforming Plastics Recycling
To achieve this, we must simplify recycling rather than look to over-complex technologies to solve our challenges. Without the need to go down any sophisticated, costly route there are four components in packaging that could transform the way packaging is recycled. In the true sense of a circular economy one can only recycle what is put out by the retailers and brand owners. Pigmentation, adhesives, labels, and inks limit re-use as recycled materials and especially in food-grade applications, and therefore impede true circularity. These might seem like small details when in fact all four play a pivotal role in whether a pack is recycled back into high-quality packaging or turned into low value recyclates or worse, sent to energy recovery or landfill.
#1: Sticky End for Adhesives
The aggressive glues with a range of additives are particularly an issue for recyclers of PET, PP, HDPE and LDPE film packaging as these materials can accumulate in the recycled materials as non-intentionally added substances (NIAS). Some options such as self-peeling labels that remove the adhesive and the label during washing stages of recycling are already on the market.
#2: Inks
Going further we need to ensure the inks on the labels do not bleed into the water used in the washing stages of recycling.
#3: Labels
The labels themselves need to be readily separated by logical separation steps such as sink/float systems and recycled to avoid any unwanted waste.
#4: Recycling by Colors
Colored recycled plastics have a lower value and are much less likely to be recycled into food-grade packaging due to the color matching needs for specific packaging. Yet, as mentioned earlier, food packaging is plastics biggest market so it stands to reason that if we can readily differentiate food from non-food packaging, we can have a huge impact on recycled plastics.
One simple solution would be to use colors to speed the process up. Pigments are possibly the most contentious yet easily reversible element of today’s packaging and we need to flip the way we use them. Instead of using colors to tell a brand story and create on-shelf standout, colors could be put to better use if they were to define which category the product contained within belongs to.
In this scenario all foods would be contained in natural or white packaging. Non-foods would be in pastel colored packaging that would use a smaller concentration of pigments and all hazardous products would be in black (carbon black or detectable black) plastic. Sorting by transparent/white, pastel and black would simplify recyclers lives as they could use their well-established, accurate and low-cost automatic sorting technology that relies on the Near Infra Red (NIR) and visible light spectrum and existing cameras for detection.
Time Wasting
If we focus on these four elements, we will already make great in-roads. What we do not need is more time-consuming research that is not connected to current problems and tasks that need resolution. Anything other than genuine efforts to curb our CO2 emissions wastes precious time and resources. In my mind there are two such key distractors.
Misleading Green Solutions
Despite the many good innovations coming on stream, it would be fair to say that the majority of packaging is still being designed to be processed only once and this needs to change. We do not need innovative packaging materials that ultimately create new unmanageable waste streams, instead we should focus on recycling-friendly formulations such as reduced pigments and recycling-positive labels and adhesives. These will enhance collection of recyclable packaging and divert it from leakage into the environment or the growing waste-to-energy destinations.
Legislatively Starting and Stopping
One of the most confusing and disheartening challenges we currently face are the mixed messages coming from the European Union. On the one hand we have the EU Green Deal and the EU Circular Economy Action Plan driving for all packaging in the EU to be reusable or recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030, yet in the same instance we are faced with new, long-winded regulations for recycled plastics in direct food contact. These regulations are in urgent need of updating now that there is an established track record in recycling to ensure safety assessments are based on more precise risk analysis. These updates are required to simultaneously ensure food safety and progress the circular economy.
Given the technological advances that have recently taken place in the recycling sector to deliver safe recycling of food packaging, we need to streamline and update the numerous administrative procedures that are slowing progress.
Making Changes Now for Tomorrow
We now need to apply common sense and the effective technologies we already must have. We cannot wait for the perfect moment when everything falls into place – we need to keep pushing forward with what we can do today. The latest report on the climate crisis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) puts it succinctly – the window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all is rapidly closing. We will never again have this time, where we know what the situation is so conclusively. This scientific consensus, combined with the fact that most climate solutions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change exist, provides a unique opportunity for us to address the gaps and act.
As the report points out, apathy is our biggest enemy. As the powers that be continue analyzing, mulling, and musing, every increment of global warming continues to intensify numerous and concurrent hazards. By making simple and cost-effective changes we can already make significant differences. We cannot afford to put future generations in jeopardy as they will increasingly struggle to adapt to a far hotter and profoundly different world to the one, we currently know.
Professor Kosior’s unique combination of technical expertise in the plastics recycling sector and understanding of global and domestic markets and infrastructure spans 48 years, split between 23 years as an academic and 25 years working in plastic packaging recycling. Reducing the world’s polymer waste and carbon footprint by developing new innovations is the driving force to his founding the science-based sustaintech organisation, Nextek. Professor Kosior has been instrumental in designing numerous modern recycling plants and he has achieved a number of patented recycling breakthroughs. Some of his most recent transformational projects include NEXTLOOPP, the Award-winning global multi-participant project to close the loop on post-consumer plastic packaging and turn it into high-quality food-grade recycled Polypropylene (FGrPP) and Award-winning COtooCLEAN, a unique technology to recycle soft plastic films back to food-grade compliance.
For more information, visit www.nextek.org or www.nextloopp.com.