Let’s stop wasting time

In this guest blog, Professor Edward Kosior, founder of sustainability experts, Nextek, reminds us that a genuine circular economy relies on simplifying our packaging and therefore our recycling streams, not adding to them with new complex categories.

Coca Cola’s recent trial of a paper bottle highlights the power major brands have to harness their innovation resources to enhance recyclability. The beverage giant assures us that the paper bottle concept is part of their global vision to achieve a “World Without Waste”.

Their efforts might be more effective if they were to focus on simplifying their packaging and therefore our recycling streams, not adding complexity to them with new and difficult-to-recycle categories.

Let’s ask ourselves which recycling stream this prototype bottle would be directed to; paper recycling or plastics recycling? With its (bio)plastic liner, moulded neck and plastic cap it is unlikely to be either.

In a circular economy this bottle would need to invent a new category if it were to be a replacement for their current recyclable materials such as PET, Aluminium and glass.

As it stands Coca Cola is already very progressive in their use of recycled PET with very good packaging designs for recyclability, so it feels counter-intuitive that they come out with a design that has no apparent end-of-life strategy.

Back in 2018 70 brand owners and organisations pledged for recycled content, generating a demand in Europe for 10 million tonnes per year of recycled plastics by 2025 in order to address their targets related to greater sustainability and carbon neutrality.

Despite this the current capacity is projected to grow to just over 6.4 million tonnes requiring a further capacity expansion of over 60% in 4 more years.

What we need are all hands to the deck to achieve the kind of targets set out by the BPF in their recent 2030 Roadmap. According to their report, if all plastic were recycled globally this could result in mean annual savings of 30 to 150 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to shutting between 8 and 40 coal-fired power plants globally.

If major brands - that have the potential to create transformational change - start getting side-tracked by innovations that are aimed more at the uninformed consumer than resolving their footprint,  we risk venturing down cul-de-sacs rather than making genuine progress.

Whilst I applaud all innovative ventures that strive to boost recyclability, brands have to single-mindedly focus on the greater purpose which is to reduce our use of resources and eliminate post-consumer waste by enhancing recycling, not adding complexity to the recycling stream. Ultimately this means acknowledging and ensuring that sustainability and plastic can go hand-in-hand.

Let’s stop wasting time and resources on fancy new packaging that steers us off course. Instead we should be aiming to get better at recycling plastics. The likes of PET is totally recyclable as recently demonstrated by Japan who have re-categorised plastic waste as "plastic resources,”. Japan already recycles 92% of their PET beverage containers and they are aiming for 100% recycling rate by 2030 - and this with no deposit.