PLASTICS RECYCLING STATE-OF-THE-ART
The packaging plastics recycling rates have increased significantly over the past decade according to the OCDE, as the following graph shows:
However, this statistic does not take into account the plastic waste in litter or from other sorts of industry. If these were taken into account, then the global plastics recovery rate through recycling will drop:
For instance, in general terms, when talking globally about how much plastic is actually being recycled, Europe has only 8% of the global total– but when comparing such data with the statistics that are often shown by goverments, NGOs are advising that there is a clear overestimation because the data is based on what re-proccessors report when claiming recovery rates.
However, there is a financial incentive for companies to overclaim recycling rates - and ultimately, fraud and errors can lead to the discrepancy between reported and actual recycling rates. In that regard, according to the WWF and Greenpeace, from their analysis, they have found that the real recycling rates are averaged at 20% less than what is actually being reported.
In that regard, it is fair to say that there is a lack of plastics which are ready to be sent to recycling companies – and further, the supply of recycled plastics cannot necessarily be assured in many cases.
As per the global plastic consumption distribution according to the types of plastics, polyethylene, PET, and polypropylene remain as the most commonly used plastics in the industry:
Since not all the plastics will be equally recyclable due to their intrinsic characteristics, the supply of recycled plastics will also depend on those respective recyclability rates. In that context, PET is the plastic that has the best recyclability potential, followed by PE, PS, and lastly, PP.
Therefore, packaging suppliers have to take such material properties into account in the recycling decision-making process.
RECYCLED PLASTICS PERFORMANCE
During the recycling process, a material would be subjected to heat, pressure, fatigue stress... As a consequence, these plastics would not perform as well as virgin plastics. In fact, of all the plastics that are being recycled, only 2% would be upcycled. The other 98% would have two main drawbacks, which are:
- Change in color: Transparent materials would adopt a greyish colour, and the coloured plastics would lose their brightness. This specific aspect, may be a key point for the personal care (e.g., cosmetics) and food industry, where marketing and the way that a product looks to customers play an important role.
- Loss of their mechanical properties: When using recycled materials (either cardboard or plastic) the quality of the mechanical properties would decrease. However, this aspect is easy to tackle; producers will have to increase the overall packaging weight to make up for it. But, they need to take into account what this increased weight implies in terms of logistics, energy consumption on their manufacturing sites,
CONCLUSION
As mentioned above, if companies want to go for recycled materials they have to take into account the assurances of supply of the raw materials, the cosmetic aspects of the packaging, and their mechanical properties.
As it relates to the technical aspects of recycling, many scientific advances are taking place, and the supply would never be able to be ensured if companies do not start making the necessary changes to transition from using monomaterial packaging to recycle-ready materials. By doing so, the amount of recycled plastic would increase and more companies would be able to opt in to this more sustainable model.
For this reason, the policies that encourage taxation on packaging that do not meet a certain recyclability rate/standard, are better for the environment than those which tax plastics across-the-board. When taxing plastic per Kg, goverments are pushing companies to use less plastic, but also to use more complex structures to substitute for that plastic. So, ironically, a full plastic tax will reduce the recycling rate of packaging and less companies would be able to "close the loop".