Lifting the lid on packaging waste
The single-use plastic bag is going – what’s next? That’s the question being asked by businesses, as they work with the plastics industry to find out which other kinds of plastic packaging can be replaced sustainably or recycled.
Following last week’s government proposal to ban single-use plastic bags over the next year, Sustainable Business Network chief executive Rachel Brown said a diagnostic study was under way with 10 leading businesses to understand the country’s entire plastic packaging system.
The project includes Bluebird Foods, Coca-Cola Amatil, Countdown and Lewis Road Creamery. The results will be out in October.
Brown said plastic bags were just the tip of the iceberg. Radical change was needed regarding how New Zealand used plastics.
‘‘The environmental impact of plastic packaging, particularly single-use plastic bags, is now well known,’’ she said.
‘‘But what many people don’t realise is that there’s a massive economic cost involved too because of resource wastage.
‘‘The cost of packaging waste sits at around $80 billion globally and is rising as the costs of cleanup are added. So the phasing out of single-use plastic bags is not only good for the environment – it’s good for the economy.’’
Dr Joya Kemper, a sustainability marketing lecturer at the University of Auckland, said the groundswell against plastic bags was strong enough now that retailers still providing them could face stigma.
‘‘This may then shift attention to other areas – like plastic packaging of food – and move society towards reducing plastic waste and creating a circular economy rather than a linear economy.’’
Businesses have been signing the Sustainable Business Network’s plastic packaging declaration, which commits them to using 100 per cent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging in New Zealand by 2025 or earlier.
But innovation has also come to the rescue, such as new food trays made locally of recycled plastic, and a recycling system for soft plastics such as bread bags and wrappings.
Lyn Mayes, of the Packaging Forum and manager of the Soft Plastics Recycling scheme, said the scheme – which collects waste through drop-off facilities at supermarkets and other public places – was now totally funded by the industry.
However, consumers were not using the scheme for plastic bags as much as they could. Although single-use carrier bags represented about half of all soft plastics by weight, they made up only about 10 per cent of what was going in the soft plastic bins.
Mayes agreed that the ban on plastic bags was a good start to tackling what was a long list of other plastics.
‘‘What we’ve been focusing on with soft plastics is the other range of plastic – bread bags, frozen pea bags, and the wraps around your sanitary hygiene products.’’
A pragmatic look at plastic bag alternatives was also needed, she said.
‘‘If people switch from a single-use plastic bag to a compostable bag and we have very few facilities in place to take it, and we don’t have the collection systems in place to take it, then we just shift the problem to another that we then have to solve.’’
A lot of soft plastics had no monetary value for recycling companies. ‘‘So it’s a matter of actually supporting the processes and investing in them so we can turn those materials into something else.’’
One strategy for brands was to reduce and simplify their packaging. ‘‘If you can use a single packaging type, whether it be a polyethylene bag or a PET drinks container or a box or a glass bottle, it’s a single material and much more easily recyclable.’’
Countdown’s general manager of corporate affairs, Kiri Hannifin, said both removing and reducing unnecessary packaging were big aspects of the supermarket chain’s new strategy.
‘‘This won’t always be possible, for example with food safety, but we are on the lookout for better options and have a focus on reduction and minimisation – as opposed to just managing the problem when it becomes waste.’’
A surprisingly fact, Mayes said, was that plastic bags made up only a small amount of the overall plastics consumption mountain, but they were among the most visible pollutants because they were easily lost.
‘‘It’s a bigger proportion of the litter on the beach because it’s blown down there . . . It’s a bigger proportion of stuff that’s going into the oceans.’’
Others in the packaging industry are somewhat alarmed by the ban. The Packaging Council of New Zealand’s executive director, Sharon Humphreys, said it would be ‘‘a step too far’’ if the ban was extended from bags to plastic packaging.
‘‘Plastic packaging is used because it is effective, efficient and economic. Any suggestion to extend plastic bans into the packaging space starts to impact areas such as food safety, sterile packaging, logistical efficiencies affecting carbon emissions [and] health and safety regulations.’’
She was worried the focus on a single plastic item would become a distraction from what was really needed – a national waste management and recycling strategy.
‘‘Advocates of banning plastic will always find examples of potential misuse, but those charged with policy development need to offer a balanced perspective, which is mindful of society’s requirements, not simply appeasement of the vocal minority.’’