Clutching at straws in plastic recycling
SHUNNING a plastic straw is a noble contribution to global efforts to arrest mankind’s single-use plastic habit‚ but are you still buying supermarket bags every time you shop?
Are you separating your plastic and making sure it gets into a recycling stream‚ and do you boycott products packaged in plastic which cannot be recycled or will not be because there is no market for it?
“Everyone is getting emotional about all the plastic in our oceans‚ as we should‚ but most of us have blood on our hands in terms of the poor choices we make as consumers‚” Chandru Wadhwani‚ joint managing director of major plastics recycling company Extrupet, said.
“Product packaging should be designed with its after-life as a priority‚ but unfortunately many brand owners don’t think beyond marketing and cost.”
The ideal PET (the plastic of beverage bottles) is clear‚ Wadhwani said. That creates the highest quality‚ most sought-after resin post-recycling.
So green‚ brown‚ red and mostly those fluorescent bottles are bad news for recycling‚ creating lowvalue resin for which there is little to no market‚ with the result that those bottles are often shunned by small collectors.
Bottled water companies are often guilty of not designing for recycling‚ Wadhwani said.
“They’ll use a clear bottle‚ which can be recycled‚ but then instead of applying a label‚ they’ll print directly onto the bottle – that ink purges during recycling and the resin can’t be used to make another bottle.”
Plastic packs with labels shrinkwrapped onto them are also extremely recycling-unfriendly.
Happily‚ there have been some recent wins. “Both Sprite Zero and Schweppes Tonic Water used to be in a green bottle‚ and are now in clear ones‚” Wadhwani said.
Getting consumers to appreciate the fact that PET beverage bottles are not trash and should never end up in a landfill is a major challenge for Petco‚ South Africa’s PET recycling company.
But that is exactly where most of the plastic bottles being recycled in this country come from.
Petco uses a voluntary fee paid annually by members – among them Coca-Cola‚ Nampak Liquid‚ Woolworths‚ Pick n Pay and Astrapak – on every ton of raw material they buy‚ to enable its contracted recyclers to pay collectors for bales of bottles.
And that is how a record 65% of post-consumer bottles were recycled last year‚ up from 55% in 2016‚ to put the country on par with international standards‚ and streets ahead of many companies.
The US, for example, only recycles around 30% of its used PET bottles.
“For Petco and its partners to have grown collections during this tough time is truly remarkable‚” chief executive Cheri Scholz said in the company’s June newsletter. ý
A VIETNAMESE mangrove draped with polythene, a whale killed after swallowing waste bags in Thai seas and clouds of underwater rubbish near Indonesian paradise islands – grim images of the plastic crisis that has gripped Asia.
About eight million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans every year, equal to one rubbish truck of plastic being tipped into the sea every minute of every day.
More than half comes from five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, according to a 2015 Ocean Conservancy report.
Greenpeace Indonesia campaigner Ahmad Ashov Birry said: “We are in a plastic pollution crisis.
“We can see it everywhere in our rivers, in our oceans . . . we need to do something about it.”
The UN said yesterday that up to five trillion grocery bags were used each year – and barely any are recycled.
In a report for International Environment Day, the world body warned that at current levels the earth could be awash with 12 billion tons of plastic rubbish by mid-century.
A UN report released in Delhi indicates that about 79% of the plastic ever made has been dumped.
Just 9% of the nine billion tons of plastic the world has ever produced has been recycled.
Only a little more – 12% – has been incinerated.
Yesterday’s tagline was: “If you can’t reuse it, refuse it.”
It is more than just aesthetics. Plastics are killing marine life.
Last week a whale died in southern Thailand with 80 plastic bags in its stomach, an increasingly common sight alongside dead seabirds and turtles gorged on plastic and washed ashore.
Experts warn that the greatest threat might be invisible.
Microplastics – tiny shards that easily soak up toxins after breaking off from larger plastic pieces -have been found in tap water, ground water and inside fish that millions of people eat every day.
Scientists still do not fully understand the health effects of consuming microplastics.
Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the global marine and polar programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said: “We’re conducting a global experiment with no sense of where we’re heading.”
Ocean Conservancy said that at the current rate of dumping, plastic rubbish in the world’s oceans was expected to double to 250 million tons by 2025.
There could be more plastic than fish in the world’s seas by then if nothing is done. – AFP