How do we make plastics circular?

Plastics play an important role in all sectors. It can be used for window frames or floors in construction, as packaging in the food chain and as a raw material in consumer goods. Plastics are often made from fossil fuels and do not usually decay in nature. This makes it even more important to close the plastic cycle.

Opportunities

There are five strategies on which many entrepreneurs and administrators are focusing in order to achieve a circular application of plastics:

• Avoiding unnecessary use by handling plastic products and packaging as sparingly as possible;
• Designs for reuse, such as a mug that can be used instead of a quantity of disposable cups;
• Designs for high-quality recycling of products or packaging, such as the products made from mono materials.
• Targeted collection, sorting and recycling of plastic, to be obtained high-quality level of plastic materials;
• Business models for optimal use, such as renting products instead of selling them.

Below are three examples of companies working with these strategies.

Auping

In 2019, Auping won the Circular Award Business with the development of the Revive mattress, which is fully recyclable. In the Netherlands, 1.5 million mattresses are discarded every year. Mattresses are poorly recyclable and most of them are currently incinerated. The ‘Revive’ mattress, which was developed in collaboration with DSM-Niaga, offers the solution to this problem. It is a high-quality mattress of which all materials are suitable for reuse in a new mattress. The company also offers the mattress in a lease construction (Auping, 2019).

Companies looking for more examples of circular products and companies can take a look at the "What are businesses doing?" part on the knowledge hub.

Ioniqa

Many plastic packaging is difficult to recycle mechanically due to its multilayer design and dyes. The Eindhoven-based company Ioniqa Ioniqa has developed a proprietary technology that is able to convert any PET waste - including colored packs - back into transparent virgin grade material. In 2018, the company signed a partnership with Indorama, Coca-Cola and Unilever, which now makes part of its packaging from Ioniqa’s recycled raw material (Ioniqa, 2019).

Ecological and Economic Profit

The circular use of plastics reduces greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from micro and macro-plastics, which is positive for the environment. The production of plastics releases greenhouse gases. At the same time, only 15 to 17% of plastics are recycled after use. Most of them are incinerated after use in waste incineration plants, where greenhouse gases are again released. A small part disappears into the environment, where it pollutes the food chain and natural systems.

Circular use of plastics can lead to profits because raw materials and products retain their value and fewer new raw materials need to be mined. In the ideal situation, a solution can even be found, which means that fewer quantities or no product at all need to be made. If this cannot be prevented, it is important to recycle plastic in a high-quality way. A lot of value can be gained by setting up effective logistics for post-consumer plastics. Unsorted sources of plastic can be reused with chemical recycling, but this is still under development.

Barriers

Despite the opportunities for circular plastics, there are still three factors hindering their development: awareness, technology and cooperation.

Awareness

Greater awareness of the problems of plastic consumption and the alternatives is essential to make this transition. However, research also shows that awareness alone is not enough to bring about a change in behavior. Other motivational factors, such as price, convenience, habituation and cultural norms are also important.

Technology

Due to their specific properties, plastics are difficult to replace with other materials, so high-quality recycling is important in order to close the cycles of plastics. The challenge in recycling is that plastics often contain adhesives, dyes and other additives in addition to carbon compounds. With conventional recycling, these often remain in the mix. In chemical recycling, it is potentially possible to degrade plastics into the smallest chemical building blocks, from which new monomers and polymers can then be made. Other substances can be filtered out. Investments are needed to enable innovation, further development and upscaling of chemical recycling.

Collaboration

Plastics often go a long way from production to use. As a result, closing this chain also requires cooperation with all chain partners. An example is the standardization of the types of plastic used for packaging. Currently, dozens of types of plastic are used in supermarkets, all with a specific function. Because of this diversity, these plastics are difficult to recycle. If the packaging producers, suppliers and retailers together decided to use some of these types of plastic, this would significantly improve recycling, without sacrificing much in terms of functionality.

Policy

The European Commission adopted a strategy in 2018 to ensure that all plastic packaging can be reused or recycled by 2030. This strategy includes objectives such as banning disposable plastics, designing all products and packaging to be fully recyclable, and recycling at least 70 percent of the single-use plastic at a high-quality level. Furthermore, by 2025, 35 percent of all single-use plastic products and packaging must be made of recycled plastic.

In recent years, different policies and practices have been developed in Turkey regarding the management of plastic waste. The primary application among these is the "zero waste" approach.

With the Zero Waste Regulation, which also covers plastic waste, published in 2019, the goal is to determine the general principles and basis regarding the establishment, dissemination, development, monitoring, financing and documentation of the zero-waste system.

Another step in the field of plastic waste in Turkey is specified with the regulation made in the Environment Law in 2018. In line with the published Regulation on Recovery Contribution Share, it is expected that a deposit system will be introduced for different packaging types, including plastic.