Pictured above, from left: Michiel De Smet, Rachel Goldstein and Gary Crawford

“Plastics have become the ubiquitous workhorse material of the modern economy: combining unrivalled functional properties with low cost, their use has increased twentyfold in the past half-century,” according to “The New Plastics Economy: Catalysing Action, a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “While plastics and plastic packaging are an integral part of the global economy and deliver many benefits, their archetypically linear, take-make-dispose value chains entail significant economic and environmental drawbacks.”

Panelists during the session The New Plastics Economy at Wastecon/ISWA World Congress in Baltimore in late September looked at efforts to increase the circularity of this material and the hurdles that must be overcome.

Michiel De Smet, a project manager for the New Plastics Economy at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, London, acknowledged the many benefits associated with plastic packaging, however, he added, “the system it operates in is broken.”

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched the New Plastics Economy initiative in 2016. It is a three-year project that the foundation is executing with the help of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation; its philanthropic funders, MAVA Foundation, Oak Foundation and players of People’s Postcode Lottery; its core partners, Amcor, The Coca-Cola Co., Danone, Mars Inc., Novamont, Unilever and Veolia; and participating companies, cities and governments across the value chain.

He noted that $80 to $120 billion in plastic packaging material value is lost to the economy annually because plastics are not being recycled. Additionally, one-third of this material is leaking into the environment, potentially ending up in the world's oceans.

De Smet said the goal of the New Plastics Economy is to “harness the benefits of plastic with better economic and environmental outcomes.”

According to the report, without fundamental redesign and innovation, roughly 30 percent of plastic packaging will never be reused or recycled. However, for at least 20 percent of plastic packaging, reuse offers an economically attractive option, while the remaining 50 percent can be recycled economically with focused efforts to redesign packaging and the systems for managing it.

De Smet said plastics recycling cannot be improved without addressing package design as well as collection and sorting issues.

To achieve these objectives, De Smet said dialogue among stakeholders, innovation in business models and a global plastics protocol will be needed.

“No one in the supply chain can do this alone,” said Rachel Goldstein, global sustainability director, scientific and regulatory affairs, for Mars Inc., headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

She said Mars is working toward 100 percent recyclability of its packaging by 2025. She added that Mars is partnering with other companies and organizations to improve recovery of its packaging.

Mars is focused on optimizing its packaging to reduce its carbon footprint over its lifetime, Goldstein said. However, she acknowledged that reusing packaging would be difficult for the company because of food safety issues.

Mars introduced its Sustainable in a Generation Plan in early September of this year.

According to the company’s website, “Our Sustainable in a Generation plan goes further than ever before by going beyond our direct operations. We believe that if we are to deliver on the Paris Accord and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we can only do so if we tackle a broken, extended supply chain system. By launching our new plan, we’re setting a new standard for responsible growth as a business.”

Gary Crawford, vice president of international affairs, with the French company Veolia, with U.S. corporate offices in Boston, noted that his company’s tagline is “resourcing the world.”

He added that Veolia “wants to move to being a major player in the industry” by integrating from collecting plastics for recycling through to pelletizing. This would give the company the ability to sell recycled flakes, pellets or ready-to-use recycled compounds.

Crawford noted challenges with recycled plastics that include collection capacity and feedstock insecurities. He said Veolia’s priority actions to enhance the use, quality and economics of recycled plastics are packaging design changes to improve recyclability, implementing best practices for collection and sorting systems, scaling up high-quality recycling processes, developing innovative sorting for postconsumer flexible films, boosting demand for recycled plastics and deploying adequate collection and sorting infrastructure.   

Policy measures could help to “prime the pump” for recycled content demand, Crawford added.

Wastecon/ISWA World Congress was hosted by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, and the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), Wien, Austria, Sept. 25-27, 2017.