Tag Archives: Recyling rates

A UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution is needed to combat waste!

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While plastic plays an important role in our lives and brings many benefits, despite ongoing efforts, much of it ends up as waste in incinerators, landfills and the environment. Its durability also presents a challenge, particularly when it leaks from the value chain and becomes pollution. Plastics can persist in the environment for hundreds of years, causing harm to nature and people. Every year, millions of tons of plastic leak into the environment, and mounting evidence shows this problem will continue to grow unless we fundamentally rethink the way we produce, use, reuse, and dispose of plastic.

 

Photo: Brent Durand

 

Currently, more than 11 million metric tons of plastic are flowing into the ocean each year and there is no sign that leakage rates are slowing. Indeed, the global volume of plastic entering the ocean is forecast to triple over the next 20 years. Cheap and easy-to-make plastics have become so prevalent in packaging that their use has increased twenty-fold since the 1970s and is expected to double again in the next two decades.

 

Photo: U.S. News

 

All of us should have a role in the global effort aimed at stopping plastic pollution and are committed to tackling this issue. Setting concrete targets to create a circular economy for plastics and address this challenge through voluntary initiatives alone cannot solve this issue. A coordinated international response is needed, one that aligns businesses and governments behind a shared understanding of the causes of plastic pollution, and a clear approach to addressing them.

Unless all sectors are able to work together to eliminate unnecessary and problematic plastic, shift to reuse models, radically increase recycling levels and stop the leakages in the current system, plastic will continue to pollute ecosystems and result in significant ecological, social, and economic harm.

 

The UN Treaty is needed to:
1. Combat waste that ends up in oceans, land & air.
2. Engage with corporates stepped up along the entire plastic packaging value chain.
3. Reduce, reuse and recycle single-use plastic forms part of a circular economy.

 

 

Photo: Getty

 

𝗔𝘁 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗕𝗹𝘂𝗲, we think that by acting together for a common good we can shape the agenda for a new treaty on plastic pollution and so make a difference.

There is an pressing need to arrive at a global treaty on plastic pollution which addresses issues of safe plastic waste disposal. It would also drive countries towards creating a uniform system for diverting plastic waste from reaching the ocean. Several countries if left on their own may not adopt best practices required to tackle plastic pollution. Even if they do, it may take a long time to achieve this shared goal.

 

Click HERE to learn more about the UN Treaty for Plastic Pollution to combat waste.

Key Highlights of 2021 IPCC Climate Report & Takeaways for the Plastic Industry.

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The Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change – eight years since the last one in 2013, addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations.

Human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways, a major UN scientific report has said.

 

Photo: AdobeStock

 

The report “is a code red for humanity”, says the UN chief. The landmark study warns of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, whether it’s heatwaves like the ones recently experienced in Greece and western North America, floods like those in Germany and China, or a key temperature limit being broken, ‘their attribution to human influence has strengthened’ over the past decade. Since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years.

 

Photo: California wild fires, 2013. Stuart Palley/EPA.

 

The new report also makes clear that the warming we’ve experienced to date has made changes to many of our planetary support systems that are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia. The landmark study confirms beyond any doubt that temperatures and sea levels are rising at an alarming rate. Despite commitments made at the UN Paris Agreement, to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, the world is still heading towards nearly 3°C global warming and the sea level will rise by 2mts by the end of this century. The oceans will continue to warm and become more acidic. Mountains and polar glaciers will continue melting for decades or centuries.

We have done a bad job so far. While it is not the end of the world for us (as yet), we need to come up with radical changes in the way we use energy, make products and invest.

BUT, we can still avert the worst impacts of climate change IF WE ACT TODAY!

 

Photo: CypressCreek

 

EcoBlue’s Opinion: Takeaways for the Plastic Industry – 

For the Plastic Industry, there is a lot that can be done to correct the past mistakes:

  1. Recycled plastics have a two-third to three-forth lower CO2 footprint as compared to virgin resins and they often reduce marine litter.
  2. Choose energy-efficient systems while making investments, like Solar Energy & Bio-fuels.
  3. Solutions available for hard-to-recycle materials, provided we embrace Extended Producer Responsibility. Without EPR, more than half of the plastic waste will never get recycled.

At EcoBlue Ltd., we are committed to doing our part, and with only a few years for a fundamental course change, we call on everyone to join forces and act!

 

Click HERE to learn more about the 2021 IPCC Climate Report & Takeaways for the Plastic Industry.

Accelerating the Circular Economy for Post-Consumer PET Bottles in Southeast Asia.

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In recent years, the global momentum for rethinking the way plastic packaging is produced, consumed and disposed of has grown faster than ever. The largely linear approach to the way plastic packaging enters and exits our lives for fleeting moments has reached its limits and the challenges have become apparent. A year earlier, another baseline quantification determined that 8 million to 12 million tons of plastic leak into the oceans each year, with eight of the top 10 countries for plastic leakage being in Asia.

 

Photo: Pixabay

 

The GA Circular – Driving Circular Economy in Asia Report, Full Circle, provides for the first time, systematic and comparable baseline collection rates for PET bottles (one of the most recyclable forms of plastic packaging) in Southeast Asia and highlights the need for a fundamental shift in the approach to driving circularity of PET bottles. The six countries studied (Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia) account for a total population of over 600 million people, more than the population of all the EU’s 28 countries. Five of these six countries are among the top ten global contributors to ocean plastic leakage!

This baseline research (2018) shows that the average collected-for-recycling rate for PET bottles in nine key cities in Southeast Asia is 54%. The average landfill rate is 36% and environmental leakage rate is 10%. There is a wide variation in these rates across the cities.

 

 

EcoBlue’s Comments: While the priority actions as recommended in the GA Circular Study, Accelerating the Circular Economy for Post-Consumer PET Bottles in Southeast Asia, will go towards improving the recycling rates of PET bottles, EcoBlue believes that they should be complemented with the following measures to be more effective:

  1. Government-regulated Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) initiatives should be introduced as they are more effective than voluntary initiatives.
  2. The action plan should include measures for improving the recycling of all plastics and not just PET bottles for achieving true circularity.
  3. Legislations to allow recycled content in food contact applications are the need of the hour in SE Asia.

 

Click HERE to learn more about the Circular Economy for Post-Consumer PET Bottles in Southeast Asia.

EcoBlue @ Workshop on Plastics Circularity: Opportunities and Barriers for the Private Sector organized by The Pollution Control Department of Thailand and the World Bank

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EcoBlue’s Managing Director, Mr. Pranay Jain took part in a consultation workshop on Plastics Circularity: Opportunities and Barriers for the Private Sector organized by The Pollution Control Department of Thailand and the World Bank. The findings from the workshop would be used to inform a market study on plastics circularity, opportunities and barriers in Thailand, a study commissioned by the World Bank. GA Circular has been engaged to conduct the market study and had facilitated the consultation workshop in Bangkok on 28th February, 2020.

At this workshop, Pranay made a presentation on Recycling – Challenges and Solutions. He spoke about how only about 12% of the 300 million tons of plastics being used gets recycled at a global level. Thailand has a plastic production about 10 million tons with a recycling rate of about 5%.

Recycling has been identified as the backbone of a sustainable economy. However, currently the demand for recycled plastics is limited to bottles and apparels which do not improve the overall recycling rates.

The recycling rates have been declining in the recent 6 months due to the decline in oil prices and virgin resin prices making recycling not an economically lucrative activity. Apart from economic challenges, recycling is facing many challenges from other fronts like government policies that are deterrent for recycling industry and poorly designed packaging which reduces the output of recycling. Use of PVC labels, printing on bottles and cups, PP cups with PET Caps, full body labels, pumps etc. are some examples of poorly designed packaging which reduces the recyclability of the same. Design for recyclability has to be a key focus area for packaging industry!

A drop in recycling rate means more and more plastic waste is being land filled, littered or reaching our oceans. Only voluntary measures cannot bring about the desired change. A policy framework needs to be put in place. For example, the 10 million tons of pledge for recycled content by EU is prompting companies to make commitments that can be measured. Studies have shown that Extended Producer Responsibility & Landfill restrictions are the most effective measures for improving the recycling rates.

We have to work towards creating an environment where recycling can thrive. It would need:

  • Design for recycling guidelines
  • Creating a market for recycled polymers so that recycled plastics can survive even when the virgin prices are low
  • Permit use of recycled materials in food contact applications
  • Conduct risk assessment studies for single use plastics to categorize and prioritize actions to be taken
  •  Redefine BOI policies to include washing etc as a promoted activity.