Plastics

Global consumption of plastics is continuing to soar – and with it the need for an ever more efficient and well-supported recycling infrastructure. The world economy posted robust growth of 5.5% in 2021, with further significant gains of 4% anticipated for 2022 and 3.5% for 2023. Plastics has been among the many beneficiaries, supporting predictions that the world will consume 620 million tons by 2025, 832 million tons by 2040 and even 1.23 billion tons by this century’s mid-point.

Alongside this steep growth trend, we are also witnessing what analysts believe are only the beginnings of a step-change in demand for recycled plastics. Statista, for example, forecasts that the market value of global plastic recycling will increase by more than US$ 25 billion to an estimated US$ 60 billion in the eight years to 2027.

A major factor in this recycled plastics revolution has been the decision by an increasing number of major brands to switch to circular business models. During last May’s BIR Plastics Committee webinar, for example, guest speaker Eelco Smit explained that Dutch-based multi-national Philips had set targets for 2025 of securing 25% of its revenues from circular products, services and solutions, and of quadrupling its annual use of recycled plastic. Already, 95% post-consumer polypropylene content had been incorporated into vacuum cleaner housings and more than 75% recycled plastics into the non-food-contact parts of an award-winning coffee-maker, he told us.

But despite this tectonic shift in attitudes towards recycled plastics use, 2021 brought familiar challenges in terms of the wider perception of what we do and of its importance to the environment, typified by some detrimental comments from highly influential sources who should either be better informed or express themselves more clearly.

Speaking in October ahead of the COP-26 climate change summit in Glasgow and therefore at a time when environmental issues were attracting maximum public attention, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson assured a group of schoolchildren that recycling “doesn’t work” and constitutes nothing more than “a red herring”. Fortunately, a number of experts rallied to rebut his comments, including UK anti-waste charity WRAP which not only described Mr Johnson’s observations as “unhelpful” but also hailed recycling as “a critical part of tackling climate change”, adding that it takes 75% less energy to produce a plastic bottle made from recycled content compared to new plastic.

We can only hope that these calmer and more considered voices are the ones that prevail in the public mind.

The real truth is that, in a significant number of ways, plastics recycling has never worked better. In many parts of the world, we are now seeing much more recycling taking place closer to source as well as a definitive disconnect between primary and recycled plastic values that will continue to spur recycling activity and investment. At the BIR Plastics Committee’s webinar in November last year, Mark Victory of market intelligence provider ICIS argued that, across the plastics spectrum, virgin values were no longer acting as a price cap on recycled prices because of the willingness of brand owners to pay more for the latter in order to meet their sustainability targets. Indeed, many of these targets are now exceeding regulatory requirements because of the scale of consumer pressure to incorporate recycled content in their products.

The general circulation of ill-informed or poorly-worded comments about plastics recycling is not the only challenge facing our industry at present. We can also point to a lack of both feedstock and labour, and to the substantial volumes lost to incineration through the insufficient attention paid to design for recycling.

And as emphasized during both our webinars last year, moving our materials remains fraught with difficulties: global freight rates have soared to punishingly high levels amid disruption and shortages, while inland trucking is also suffering many problems, including a lack of drivers owing to the impact of COVID.

But despite all these obstacles, 2021 will enter history as a truly amazing and groundbreaking year. The course of plastics recycling has changed irrevocably, and almost certainly for the better.