OPINION | PACKAGING RECYCLING
Retail and brands must make sensible packaging decisions
Major CO2 targets were key in talks at COP26 in Glasgow, but Ed Kosior of Nextek argues we need to focus on more rapid and achievable goals when it comes to packaging waste
COP26 has further highlighted the crucial need for all of us to take climate change seriously. Certainly the surges of extraordinary weather events around the world are making more people pay attention. David Attenborough’s most recent documentary Breaking Boundaries spells it out well – we have already breached many of our planet’s boundaries and we can’t afford to be complacent about the actions we take to reduce our CO2 emissions. A few days before the start of COP26, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that recycling plastic materials “doesn’t work”. His comments about recycling obviously don’t take into account that at least 1 tonne of CO2 is saved for every tonne of plastic material diverted from landfill to be recycled. We need to embrace multiple ways of using and
re-using packaging rather than the old linear model of dig, use and discard. A lot of innovation in substitution, re-use, refill, recovery of carbon content and energy recovery is happening right now to address the problem. The challenge is that for the past 60 years, businesses have educated consumers that plastics
36 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | November/December 2021
are cheap and can be discarded at the end of the first use. Now we are living with the global conse- quences of this outdated mindset. A serious lack of ‘big picture’ thinking on the way we handle all our waste is crippling us. Just look at the way the UK government recently voted down a proposed law to limit discharges of untreated sewage into rivers. These will end up dumping plastics and other matter into all rivers in the UK and ultimately oceans. So whilst we are making many positive shifts
towards reducing our CO2 emissions – such as retailers trialling recycling systems for flexible plastics that consumers are bringing back to the store – we still need to power ahead with strategi- cally thought-through ways of sustainably achiev- ing carbon neutrality. Because not all proposed solutions are as ‘green’ as they might seem at first. One of COP26’s key focuses was the dramatic
reduction of global waste that currently incurs over 1.3bn tonnes of CO2e. Over half of the CO2e savings will come from increased recycling rates and increased recycled content, yet some of the
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
