The development of a circular economy continues to host a lot of sustainability targets for those in packaging. But the challenges do remain, and a lot of the public at large can overcome this. This was echoed through a webinar, about how the plastic recycling is creating a circular economy, where there is access to recycling and the availability for it. An investment in the recycling infrastructure is going to be met, and with more recycling plants being built to help with this, it’s something that is being considered by many people. But there are other elements to look at this. The embracement of the supply chain, the investment of the gathering and processing of materials, and a society that’s educated and motivated to reduce the plastic within landfills.
Recycling with the EPR
There are less than 50 recycling solutions that emanated from the US currently, with different ways to get rid of bottles, lower the recylate post-consumer, the content of such, and the responsibility of the extended producer protocols that are discussed.
As they span though, starting the campaign to make sure they have the least amount of recycled types of concentrate in beverage containers, and two weeks ago with Maine doing something similar, it can start to change the future of recycling in the world today. There are other states too that have started to focus their attention on chemical recycling and development, which offers the ability to transform the different plastics into a chemical feedstock, which can be remade into virgin plastics too.
But the industrial scale type of chemical recycling remains at least five to ten years out, simply because it is still not fully integrated, and right now is considered a more complementary process to the manual recycling, and right now, this is still short and mid-term in terms of sustainability. Federal legislation may provide a framework for a single recycling solution, which would be helpful. While this is still fragmented in nature and is still a challenge. This is because a lot of recycling is now on the Midwest and east coast, with the west coast mostly scattering the facilities, since they usually ship out a lot of it to China.
The east and Midwest don’ have the option to do it. However, there is anow another problem with this. That is that China is now not taking our plastic waste, since it’s been a few years. This can be challenging for customers and for companies, since it is hard for a brand to properly get the right materials for their brands. There are plastic converters, which are good at turning the packaging for the right specifications that each owner wants, whether it be colors, performance, layers, and the like, but it can be hard to properly recycle.
While some are still pushing for the hard task to have the recycled plastic look just as good as virgin plastic, a lot of companies are changing the swing of things, embracing the look of recycled materials, simply because it can build their brand as well just from the existence alone. And of course, with this, it also pushes for circularity as well for a lot of people, especially those who want to push for this.
Many customers, and a lot of brands are looking to change all of this, and there are a lot of great things that can happen over time when you’re looking to get the right plastic packaging. It’s a struggle, but hopefully we not only see some major changes in the future, but companies implement other types of items as well to help with this too.
