Petcore Europe Conference: Collaboration, Education and Revolution
Rose Brooke reports from the 2017 Petcore Europe Conference. Article originally posted on eppm.com on February 2, 2017.
Circular Economy and 'closing the loop' are popular buzzwords in plastics in 2017, but actually applying what they mean to the production chain, to disposal by the consumer and to processing upon collection, is a much trickier mountain to conquer.
The Petcore Europe Conference in Brussels yesterday (February 1st 2017) laid bare just how much work has to be done to succeed in circularity in the plastics value chain; and while PET is in a strong position as a recyclable plastic, as an industry nothing can be examined in isolation.
The overarching theme of the day was that collaboration, education and revolutionising plastic packaging production for recycling are of equal importance if Europe and the wider world are going to have any chance at all at affecting the volume of waste plastic ending up in landfill or the environment.
Innovate, invest
Chaired by the witty Patrick Peuch, Executive Director of Petcore Europe - who announced that he would be stepping down from this role in 2017 - a line up of ten speakers thrashed out a possible roadmap for the PET product lifecycle, extending into the wider plastics value chain in the process.
Vice-President of the Committee of PET Manufacturers in Europe (CPME) Antonello Ciottti was the first billed speaker and began by identifying some of the important facts such as that PET as a market is slowing, it is contributing to significant lightweighting and is less wasteful than traditional materials across the entire supply chain, but the industry must continue to invest to ensure recycling rates do not plateau.
"There is a bright future if we keep investing. Without redesign and innovation, 30 per cent of all plastics packaging will never be recycled and the implementation of a circular economy will require a strong research and development effort from everybody in the PET chain," he stated.
Consumer-driven trends
Nicolas Rivollet, Husky's Director of Corporate Business Development added his forecast to Ciotti's, remarking that PET bottle production is going up and the market share will be dominated by still water as carbonated drinks continue to dwindle in popularity, while the fashion for smaller bottles will grow. This is an opportunity for PET processors and brands, he said, as designers can manage the value of the product architecture and lightweighting by rethinking these bottles, while efficient thread and closure systems offer significant benefits for lightweighting.
There is potential for growth in PET, he said, with opportunity for expansion in household care and toiletries where PET currently has almost zero market share.
Senior Project Manager of Technology and Development at Faerch Plast Carsten Lauridsen added that there is a big opportunity for PET in meat packaging.
"We are spending more and more on our kitchen inventory," he told delegates, "but less and less time in the kitchen."
The rise of convenience food calls for tray production to maintain food safety, reduce food waste and increase the shelf-life of a single portion pack of food, which in turn extends to meat where there is opportunity for amorphous PET (APET).
Lauridsen took the audience through the evolution of meat packaging, from cuts being purchased from the butcher, wrapped in paper, to the butcher's counter moving to supermarkets, where the product would be packaged using polystyrene trays and cling film. Then centralised packaging came into fashion for most of Europe in the 2000s. The advent of centralised packaging meant polystyrene was out, PP was in, with lidding and a modified atmosphere. Now the trend for vacuum packaging is on the rise, which is where APET comes into its own.
Denkstatt data finds that a vacuum packed sirloin joint has a 16-day shelf-life, while the tray-lidded alternative will go off after six days. Vacuum packaging therefore has the potential to reduce food wastage to just 18 per cent from the current average of 34 per cent, while it has an attractive effect on the quality of the food as it is being prepared, with better browning and colour benefits.
While PP is the obvious choice, Lauridsen put the case forward for PET, which has good barrier and impact resistance but its post-consumer recycling market is still in development. APET has superior properties for vacuum packaging but work still needs to be done to bring own the cost of lidding films and to speed up sealing them to the trays.
Questioning the feedstock
Continuing in the theme of re-thinking packaging, Françoise Poulat, Head of the Sustainable Material Team at the Danone Research Plastic Material Techno Centre, set out Danone's two main pillars for sustainable plastics packaging innovation: biomaterials and recycling.
She shared some shocking statistics, including the ratio of plastics to fish in the ocean being 1:1 by 2050 at the rate plastics are entering the seas, before addressing how this could change.
Two-thirds of Danone's plastic feedstock is oil-based, seven per cent is bio-based, while 27 per cent is from recycled materials. Danone sends 52 per cent of its plastic waste to landfill, 42 per cent is recycled and six per cent goes into energy recovery. Danone wants to use more sustainable resources and lightweight its designs in a bid to put zero industrial plastic waste in landfill. The company is already applying this mind-set to the supply chain by developing an online tool that helps packaging product managers to optimise their designs for sustainability.
Circular design in action
Procter and Gamble's Gian de Belder, Principal Scientist in Research and Development for Sustainable Packaging, and Johannes Burghaus, Section Head of Research and Development for Packaging Development for Fabric and Home, made real-world examples of how recycled and recyclable plastics are being used to replace traditional materials and how design will help sort these products for recycling at end-of-life.
De Belder used the example of switching a detergent bottle from HDPE to PET, which slashed the packaging weight from 78g to just 30gm, while one of the biggest topics of the day was P&G's Head and Shoulders shampoo bottle launched at the World Economic Forum at Davos. The bottle is made with recycled plastics collected from beach clean-ups, demonstrating how brand owners can use more recycled plastics in their products helping to close the loop.
What the plastics packaging industry - and brand owners - need to consider, he noted, is that in order to make more plastic products recyclable, solutions for difficult-to-recycle packaging such as white opaque PET bottles, full-body sleeve products and hybrids must be found. Then it is the industry's job to influence eco-design, infrastructure and collection, consumer education, sorting technology and end-market creation.
De Belder then revealed another new product: a PET Lenor fabric softener bottle which contains 50 per cent PCR. The colourful label is removable to allow the clear bottle underneath to be recycled, with perforation and the correct markers engendering a sense of responsibility in the consumer to sort their waste at home giving the product its best chance of being recycled.
Johannes added that PET aerosols are soon to become a pharmacy staple, offering more design freedom, banishing the rust ring problem and making it possible to recycle an entire aerosol canister, something that rarely happens in mainstream recycling today.
Difficult-to-recycle plastics
The morning's session was followed by a panel discussion in which the audience and speakers challenged the points made in the presentations. Some considered relying on the public to take responsibility for sorting their recycling too risky, but de Belder used the example that in Japan, this sort of conscious sorting at home is routine.
A need to create an end market for white opaques was also tabled. One possibility being fibre. And those items commonly made from white opaques should be redesigned as PET products. As Rivollet eloquently put, the concept of 'sustainability' for a product is too open, whereas a mind-set of 'circular design' is more appropriate.
Commission calls for collaboration
The afternoon sessions focused on the sustainability of PET as a valuable commodity. Team Leader for Plastics and Waste Recycling at the European Commission Eric Liégeois was first to speak, encouraging all stakeholders to assist the Commission in building its Circular Economy roadmap by submitting ideas-based evidence.
"We have to address three columns," he said. "Dependence on virgin fossil feedstock, low recycling and reuse rates, and leakage of plastics into the environment."
Oil feedstocks are cheap, but a diversification of feedstock should be studied fairly, he stated. "We want to make use of all the options at our disposal. Incentives can be created."
He added that design for recyclability, reusability and reparability is key and that environmental leakage is an issue for the world. Not just Europe.
"We will not help if we do not act together," he said.
Encouraging consumers
One way of encouraging consumers to pull with industry is deposit systems, a topic Stéphane Arditi, Products and Waste Policy Manager at the European Environmental Bureau, spoke passionately about.
"I am here to challenge you, not to constrain you," he opened with, encouraging delegates to think seriously about the pros and cons of deposit schemes and where they would work best or not at all.
One issue with a deposit system for PET, he stated, is that consumers cannot easily differentiate one plastic from another unlike sorting their glass bottles and jars along with their aluminium food tins and drinks cans. Moreover, how does the plastics processor producing the PET item for recycling feel about the recycler profiting from their plastics technology?
Whatever the industry decides, it has to be decided by committee, Arditi stated. Much like France banning white opaques without discussing this with the wider industry, "new innovations on the shelf must not be selfish," he said. "It has to be a collaborative thing."
Plastics we cannot ignore
Encouraging collaboration and open innovation were presented by Research Analyst for the Ellen Macarthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy Sander Defruyt. Much like Liégeois' points made from the perspective of the Commission, the New Plastics Economy pinpoints the creation of an effective after-use plastics economy by improving the economics and uptake of recycling, reuse and controlled biodegradation for targeted applications, a reduction of leakage of plastics into natural systems, and a reduction in reliance on fossil fuel feedstocks as targets. Additionally, he stated that we cannot afford to ignore difficult-to-recycle or rarely recycled waste including small items such as sweet wrappers, multi-material products, uncommon materials and nutrient-contaminated products including coffee pods.
"With concerted efforts to improve both packaging design and after-use systems, recycling would be more economically attractive," Defruyt stated.
Executive Manager of PLAREBEL and EPRO An Vossen added more urgency to this call to action.
"Plastics move into the waste stream very, very quickly," she stated. "We have to adapt our systems."
She also noted that as an industry, we need to stop concentrating our recycling efforts on the 'low-hanging fruit' of PET bottles, which are easy to recycle even if not enough of it is being put back into the value chain.
"57 per cent of PET bottles are recycled," Vossen said, "But what about trays? Do we know the best way to recycle them? Do we put them in with the mixed plastics? The whole packaging industry must resolve these issues. Packaging and recycling cannot be looked at in isolation."
Vice-President of Plastics Recyclers Europe Casper van den Dungen agreed and put that it was up to the plastics packaging value chain to help navigate the circular economy and that there is a lot to be done if the European Commission's 2020 target of 55 per cent recycling rates is to be achieved, which is more than double what is currently being processed after use.
"The infrastructure is not there yet and there will be a time lag," he put to the audience.
Waste plastic 'has value'
In the final panel discussion of the day, PCI Wood MacKenzie Senior Consultant Helen McGeough began the debate stating that while collection rates are up, bale quality is lacking and there was a decrease in higher-value clear bales.
"A shift to PET would be competitive for processors," she remarked.
One of the first statements from the floor questioned why plastics packaging producers are shouldering so much of the blame for marine litter and plastics going to landfill when the materials are actually preventing food from being wasted and reducing carbon footprints with efficient design? While the panellists did not deny this, Defruyt stated this view was unhelpful. Plastics have to be treated as a material separately from how that material is used.
Peuch presented a collage of photos he had taken of littering spotted on his cycling route to emphasise the damage consumer laziness is doing to the environment and noted that maybe the automotive industry should play a part in innovating car designs to discourage drivers from chucking their waste out the window, as the vast majority of rubbish could be found along highways.
"We cannot put the responsibility on the consumer," Arditi replied. "But if after all of this you feel like they lack awareness, raise awareness so it touches their wallet and consider a deposit system."
An Vossen summed the day's presentations and debates up succinctly, that plastics should not be referred to as waste.
"It's a product, it has a value."
The day may not have come to any firm conclusions about how the industry best navigates the Circular Economy, but the preparation for the journey has begun, with the task seeming more daunting with every query raised.
What is important is that at no point did any of the presenters, or indeed anybody participating from the audience in the panel debates, state at any point that it cannot be done.