The plastic industry should reimagine itself
The same ‘end of the pipe’ solutions are being promoted and encouraged in the bid to ban singleuse plastic and initiating the mass movement against plastic. How futile our efforts are is clearly demonstrated by the ever-increasing production of plastic an
These dresses, designed by Atiya, are made out of 95% recycled plastic fibres and five percent spandex or lycra, known for unusual elasticity. Such fabrics have the added advantage of being wrinkle-free and comfortable. Atiya, the start-up’s chief recycling officer, co-opted a logistics firm to collect empty bottles from corporate clients such as Google, Larsen and Toubro, with which it supplied them cold pressed juices.
Many footwear and garments brands too are now relying on yarns, fashioned out of recycled PET bottles, for the obvious advantages they confer. “The garments made of this yarn are as good as original polyester-makes,” a news report quoted
Makarand Kulkarni, chief marketing officer, Polygenta Technologies, as saying. It is a subsidiary of Perpetual Global, a USbased company. Based near Nashik, this company daily recycles two million water bottles of a litre each, to generate 30 tonnes of polyester yarn per day.
Polygenta’s efforts to rely on recycled plastic slashes 86% of water required during its processing, compared to polyester yarns derived from crude oil. Besides every tonne of PET recycling can reduce a whopping 5.6 cubic metre landfill along with reduced carbon emissions, according to reports.
Plastiglomerate is a term used by geologists for the stony substance that contains mixtures of debris found on beaches, held together by weathered plastic particles. It is considered as the future-fossils that would possibly be excavated by archaeologists hundreds of centuries from now to understand why the Anthropocene - an epoch dominated by humans - ended their civilization.
Statistics on plastic waste are piling up faster than generation of waste itself. The images of the mounds of the waste are more frightening than heaps of cruel numbers of ever-increasing production that has now touched 400 million tonnes per year, starting from just about 1 million tonne in 1950.
Images of volunteers collecting plastic debris from beaches inspire more and more world leaders and celebrities alike, to join in that volunteerism, thinking that it is the solution to the plastic problem. And the smart innovators engaged in startups like plastic recycling, building roads with plastic waste, producing fuel from plastics, reuse of plastic waste for clothes and even for the fashion industry are being rewarded in public thinking that it is the panacea to get rid of plastics from our planet.
The stories of motionless turtles trapped in plastic fibres and guts of dead cows spilling out tons of eaten plastics make us feel sorry and at the same time make us forget that there are millions of micro plastics in our own body that have entered through our food and drink. We do not even know what they do to our blood, brawns and brain. Maybe our brains are already ‘plasticised’ into thinking that by collecting recycling, reusing and refurbishing we can get rid of the plastics.
We will not. Human civilisation is getting used to ‘end-of-the-pipe’ solutions rather than implementing the ‘front-end’ actions. For more than a century, we humans have attempted to reduce the pollution from car exhausts by adding and improving the catalytic convertor in exhaust pipes, rather than finding alternate fuels or alternate mobility devices. Incinerating the toxic pollutants discharged from the factories became the way to continue business-as-usual practices, rather than reducing the source of the toxicity. Diluting the deadly chemical effluent before discharge to meet the control standard became way to dodge the need of alternative manufacturing with less polluting raw materials and more resource efficiency.
The same ‘end of the pipe’ solutions are being promoted and encouraged in the bid to ban single-use plastic and initiating the mass movement against plastic. How futile our efforts are is clearly demonstrated by the ever-increasing production of plastic and its constantly appearing new uses in digital devices that are heralding Industrial Revolution 4.0 . Unfortunately, though the world is in the thick of the 4th industrial revolution, the economics of industrial operations and environmental practices have not even evolved beyond 1.0. What is more, they appear to be retrograded below 1.0 .
The ‘polluter-to-pay’ principle linked with the green economy that internalises the environmental impact cost of the
man-made products have been proposed for more than four decades by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and green economists. The businesses and the governments have, however, offered only lip service to these principles. Our addiction to business-as-usual is as strong as economics-as-usual when it comes to profits.
The cost of impacts to the health and environment, apart from the cost of collection and disposal of waste arising out of product manufacture, are never internalised by the manufacturer. Those costs are left to the consumers to bear directly or through taxes they pay.
It does not require a Harvard or IIM degree to recognise that it is far more beneficial to reduce the waste generation and enhance resource efficiency in the front-end processes of manufacturing. There is also no need for the special sessions in Oxford and IITs to teach the moral responsibility of an entrepreneur to ensure that manufacturing and using the produce are socially and environmentally least damaging. Whatever the unintentional side damages that take place must be paid by the manufacturers under ‘polluter-to-pay’ principle. Economics 4.0 must include Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) under which producers are given a significant responsibility - financial and physical - to ensure full mitigation of social and environmental impacts, including the safe treatment and disposal of post-sale and consumption.
Unfortunately, leaders of the plastic industry are conspicuous by their absence in picking up plastic waste on the beaches.
EPR could be a bolder step but the industry also needs to leapfrog in competitiveness to explore and commercialise more environmentally sustainable alternatives.
Industry 4.0 should not just be about digitalization but about relooking at the selection of raw materials under scrutiny, reimagining the manufacturing and distribution process, and being ready to engage in the circular economy through a search for zero emissions and zero-waste manufacturing.
Today, the plastic industry depends heavily on fossil fuels as a main raw material, which is not sustainable. The resource efficiencies are given scant regard though the Club of Rome gave a clarion call through its ‘Limits to Growth’ report over 45 years ago.
The good news is that there are unprecedented opportunities to chart out alternative paths. The bad news is that we are addicted to set precedents and archaic patterns. The single-use-plastic ban is a good start, but without singular vigour and resolve to come from end-of-the-pipe attitudes to the front-end of the pipe, it would remain a distant dream.