It’s in your hands
Mark Jankovich, founder of Delphis Eco, talks to Tomorrow’s Cleaning about a key new initiative set to turn plastic packaging on its head.
September was a landmark month for sustainability and global efforts to minimise the use of single life plastics.
As readers, you’ll probably be aware that there is more microplastic in the ocean than stars believed to be in the galaxy. According to Ocean Conservancy,
8m tons of plastic – or a dump truck a minute – ends up in our oceans each year. This has a material impact on climate change through waste processes and new production of single life plastic. We’ve got to stop this.
Alongside WRAP’s Recycle Week and Greta Thunberg’s London Global Climate Strike, we are pleased that there is now a growing calling for Government to get behind the ‘Recycled Plastic Rating’ (RPR) – a new trust mark that will enable operators and consumers to take back control of what plastic actually gets recycled, versus what gets dumped into the oceans. We want the government to mandate on this issue, before it's too late.
Right now, there is total confusion amongst professional businesses and consumers with over 28 different marks on what is, and what is not, recyclable. And, a total breakdown in trust over what is segregated at offices and home for recycling yet gets chucked into the same dump truck and, as we now know, either ends up in a foreign land or most likely the sea.
The fact that the world only recycles 9% of the plastic it makes annually means that 91% goes into landfill, the ocean or is incinerated. This is horrendous, and the days of sending our rubbish to a far-away land and forgetting about it are over.
We need to turn this completely on its head and not talk about what might, or might not, be recyclable, but what percentage of the packaging we are buying HAS been recycled. When consumers do this, shops and supermarkets will have no choice but to package their products in more responsible packaging, resulting in the waste collectors, recyclers and Government fixing the woefully under-invested infrastructure and behaving more responsibly. This will divert millions of tons of single use plastic from going into the environment and circle it back as a totally new product.
A first of its kind, the move to launch the new RPR follows research (commissioned by Delphis Eco, conducted by Populus) which reveals that 79% of people support clearer labelling of plastic packaging to help them determine its impact on the environment, and allow them to vote with
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their pockets when it comes to purchasing behaviour. 60% of consumers said they did not understand which plastics were the most harmful.
Having a rating which shows the amount of recycled plastic content in the packaging we buy instantly gives operators and consumers the power to vote with their wallets and chose packaging that is fundamentally diverting plastic from landfill. The RPR enables them to see, at a glance, the exact plastic credentials of products they are purchasing.
I believe in leading by example and that’s why in 2017 we packaged all our professional Delphis Eco products using 100% recycled HDPE plastic – in fact, we were the first to pioneer the use of 100% recycled HDPE plastic packaging made from single-use plastic.
At the time, it was a challenging journey: it was inconceivable that there was not enough UK-collected and reprocessed single use plastic for my packaging. But, sure enough, there wasn’t enough plastic in the market to buy. It took six years and constant innovation to make it happen but make it happen, we did.
Since then, it has been encouraging to see a number of large brands following suit and increasing their recycled plastic content in packaging. There is also talk that Government will legislate to ensure a 30% RPR content level in all plastic.
We’ve spoken to a number of companies, academic bodies and NGO’s and they all agree that there needs to be much more clarity and focus around what is recycled, and that we should unite behind one mark that business and consumers can trust. Like the successful Fairtrade and sustainably sourced fish marks, this will empower purchasers to force shops and wholesalers to adopt better social and environmental behaviour.
We are a proudly British SME which has broken the mould by proving that single-use plastic can be 100% recycled in the UK. This process took over six years to perfect, with many difficulties. If we really want to try save our planet we need to collaborate with other businesses as fast as possible and ask consumers to insist that they will only buy products which have packaging made from recycled plastic content.
We hope that operators in the cleaning sector along with wholesalers and retailers will listen to consumers and customers and take action. And pressure will continue to build on Government to mandate and make the new RPR mandatory on all packaging, encourage the acceleration of how single use plastic can be given a second life, and increase scrutiny of exactly how plastic is recycled in the UK.
www.delphiseco.com
twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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