(Credit: CGF)Twelve member companies of The Consumer Goods Forum’s Coalition of Action on Plastic Waste have published a letter addressed to suppliers, regulators, and investors expressing their need to procure adequate supply of recycled material produced in line with their environmental standards. The companies -- including Amcor, Barilla, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Ferrero, Haleon, Henkel, Mars, Incorporated, McCain Foods, Mondelez International, PepsiCo, and Unilever -- are working to increase the use of recycled materials in their packaging and to achieve higher recycling rates.
But in order to achieve these goals, the companies say better infrastructure is needed to process far higher volumes of plastic waste that is currently ending up in landfills or incinerators, and to reliably provide high volumes of recycled plastic. A wider survey of coalition member companies indicates they are in need of 800,000 tons of chemically recycled material per year by 2030, in addition to their needs for mechanically recycled materials. To date, supply has not been able to keep up with demand.
The companies' goals are guided by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment to a New Plastics Economy.
By expressing their interest in procuring these materials, the companies "are sending a strong signal to regulators and investors of the need for scale in plastics chemical recycling infrastructure," the letter states.
Demand for post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging was nearly 4.8 million metric tons in 2021 and will see significant growth through 2026, with the food and beverage industry leading the way, according to a recent report from Smithers. The food and beverage industry accounted for more than two-thirds of PCR consumption last year and will see the greatest increased demand through 2026. Beverage companies, including PepsiCo, have worked to increase the amount of recycled materials in their bottles over the past few years.
Chemical, sometimes called molecular, recycling uses technology to break down waste into its molecular building blocks so it can be reused over and over again
In April 2022, members of the Coalition published a Vision and Principles Paper, entitled Chemical Recycling in a Circular Economy for Plastics, which encourages the development of new plastics recycling technologies that meet six key principles for credible, safe, and environmentally sound development. At the same time, members of the Coalition published an independent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, that demonstrates that system-level emissions would be approximately 40% lower in certain geographies and under certain conditions if at-scale chemical recycling was available to process hard-to-recycle plastics, rather than sending these plastics to waste-to-energy incinerators.
The Coalition recognizes that although chemical recycling technology is "not a silver bullet," it will be an important technology which can serve "a vital purpose for the recycling of unavoidable plastic waste which cannot be otherwise recycled mechanically."
In an upcoming Leaders Live interview, Christopher Layton, sustainability director for Specialty Plastics with Eastman Chemical Company, discusses the difference between mechanical and chemical (or molecular) recycling, and explores strategies to turn the vision of a future with a fully circular plastics value chain — without using virgin fossil feedstocks — into a reality.
Layton shares thoughts on recycling, production consumption, and collection of plastics, explains the benefits of molecular recycling, and talks about transparency and certification, as well.
