Packaging presents a barrier to recycling
IT’S lunchtime. After slurping down a coffee you open your sandwiches and crisps to tuck into a midday feast.
Afterwards you head to the recycling bin and make sure you recycle your coffee cup – if you haven’t used a reusable one in the first place.
But what about crisp packets and sandwich cartons? Why aren’t we recycling them?
According to a Mintel report published in January the potato snack is eaten by 90% of adults on a regular basis and has been a staple in children’s packed lunchboxes for generations. But it seems the tide is turning about how eco-friendly the packaging actually is.
Despite consumers buying around 3.7m tonnes of plastic packaging only around 842,000 tonnes gets recycled with most of the plastic we use ending up in landfill.
While some local authorities recycle items such as water bottles and cling film, things like crisp packets are currently not recyclable.
The issue is that although they look like foil, which can be recycled, they’re actually made from a metallised plastic that cannot be recycled.
If you’re not sure then scrunch up the packet. If it stays squashed you can recycle it. Earlier this year a petition calling for Walkers to ditch plastic packaging for their crisp packets was launched and has had nearly 250,000 signatures so far, with the author saying packets were “poison for the environment”.
Part of the problem is trying to recycle when we’re on the go, said Professor Wouter Poortinga, from the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. “Wales is already doing really well at recycling and is one of Europe’s top recycling nations,” he said. “Most plastic bottles being used at home are already being recycled. The problem is when we consume food and drink on the go.
“This applies to coffee cups, but also to water bottles and crisps. While technically coffee cups can be recycled there is no straightforward way to dispose of them in the right way, which means that less than 1% of coffee cups actually get recycled.
“But we have to be careful that we do not focus on one specific thing. It is a much wider issue. Single-use packaging and plastics have invaded every aspect of our lives. Currently households produce more than 5m tonnes of waste from packaging alone, most of which were single use only. To reduce that more needs to happen than doing away with coffee cups and crisp packets alone.”
The Welsh Government has a target of Wales recycling at least 70% of its waste by 2025 and to be a zerowaste nation by 2050.
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “We’ve provided local authorities with over £20m over the last three years to push recycling rates up. We’ll be investing £6.5m next year to help industry develop new infrastructure to reprocess waste.”