Turning the tide on plastic waste
State’s consumer goods companies make push for more recycling
STAMFORD — More than 30 years after the federal government started tracking the amount of waste in the U.S., the resounding majority of plastic does not get recycled. Some of Connecticut’s largest consumer-goods firms say they want to help change the trend.
Ahead of Earth Day on Monday, companies such as Stamford-based Henkel and Nestle Waters North America are focusing on making their businesses more environmentally sustainable. They face increasingly pervasive pollution from consumer products— a predicament that they are trying to tackle through improved consumer education and more ecological offerings.
“There is no silver bullet that will solve everything with one particular activity or initiative,” said David Tulauskas, the new chief sustainability officer of Nestle Waters N.A., whose brands include Poland Spring water. “But our vision of a ‘circular economy’ really needs to engage consumers and inspire them to view plastic not as waste, but as a precious resource that can be used over and over again.”
Proliferation of plastic
Until 1990, recycling, including composting, did not surpass 15 percent of “municipal solid waste” generated in the U.S., according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
It became much more prevalent during the next 15 years, but its growth then slowed. The national recycling rate reached nearly 35 percent in 2015, according to the most recent EPA data.
“I think there was a lot of effort with recycling back a few years ago, and then we hit a plateau,” said Bill Lucey, Long Island Soundkeeper for the nonprofit Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound. “We’re at a point where we need to re-adjust our strategies and hit it harder.”
In Connecticut, about 35 percent of waste was recycled or composted in 2015, a rate that has remained “relatively flat” during the past decade, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The state discards 2.4 million tons of
trash annually, an estimated 1,370 pounds of refuse for each person in Connecticut.
“One of the many factors that has negatively impacted Connecticut’s low recycling rates is that many types of materials are not covered by the recycling system,” said Louis Burch, Connecticut program director for the nonprofit Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “Plastic bottle caps, lids, straws, certain food cartons and expanded polystyrene foam containers are all extremely costly to process, and most are simply not covered by local recycling authorities.”
Keeping plastics from ending up in landfills — or worse, waterways and open land — has proved challenging. Only 9 percent of the substance was recycled nationwide in 2015, a gain of only 7 percentage points from 1990. In comparison, national recycling of paper and cardboard jumped from 28 percent in 1990 to 67 percent in 2015.
Of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic made since large-scale production started in the 1950s, 6.3 billion tons have become waste, according to researchers from the University of Georgia, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the Sea Education Association.
The plastic blight devastates ecosystems, estimated to contribute to the deaths of millions of marine animals every year.
To help reduce the toll, CFE/Save the Sound leads annual beach cleanups in Connecticut that have cumulatively removed more than 100,000 pounds of trash.
“That’s a pretty big number,
and we’re not hitting every single beach,” Lucey said. “You need to also remember that a lot of the plastic gets broken up into little pieces.”
Customer education
Sustainability experts cite the importance of consumer awareness in cutting down on waste.
“Consumer education is key to behavior change,” said Helen Lowman, president and CEO of the Stamford-based community beautification nonprofit Keep America Beautiful. “We’re going to have to change our social norms around recycling in order to make it successful. It used to be that nobody wore seat belts, but after years of behavior change, it has become a complete social norm. In the same way, recycling should be a norm that we instill in our culture.”
Nestle Waters said it led the beverage industry by adding “How2Recycle” labeling to its major U.S. brands, including Poland Spring.
A number of products made by Henkel, whose North American consumer-goods headquarters moved to downtown Stamford in 2017, also include the How2Recycle directions.
“We want to design to be recyclable, use less plastic and have things that are simplistic, so the consumer understands how they can recycle,” said Joel Faaborg, Henkel’s Stamford-based director of package development.
Committing to change
Alongside the efforts to educate consumers, Henkel and Nestle Waters N.A. are pushing ahead with initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of the manufacturing of their products.
Late last year, the two firms joined more than 250 public and private organizations in signing the “Global Commitment,” which aims to make 100 percent of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
In 2017, more than 1.2 billion Henkel consumer products were packaged with recycled material.
Throughout North America, it uses calcium carbonate as a filler material to reduce the amount of plastic in bottles for its All detergent and Snuggle fabric-softener brands. It is now expanding the substance’s use to its Persil and Purex laundry detergents. The calcium carbonate bottles are all recyclable.
Henkel is exploring other options, including compostable plastic. That material could comprise renewable raw materials, mineral oil-based sources or a mixture of the two. Compostable plastics, however, do yet not meet the company’s packaging standards.
“We’re taking a multifaceted approach,” Faaborg said. “You have to do it that way because the technology is advancing so quickly.”
Nestle Waters is also working on a number of sustainability projects.
All of its bottles are recyclable, and the company has been using recycled plastic in its packaging since 2011. Last year, the company introduced a Nestle Pure Life water bottle made entirely with recycled plastic, with the exception of its cap and label.
At the same time, the company said it has reduced the amount of “PET” plastic in its halfliter water bottles by more than 60 percent since 1994.
Environmental advocates such as Citizens Campaign for the Environment’s Burch said beverage companies would need to also support “closed-loop” recycling programs to achieve their goals.
Nestle Waters said it has contributed $6 million to the Closed Loop Fund, a $100 million investment fund that supports recycling infrastructure and programs across the U.S.
“Everyone knows it makes sense to turn off the lights when we leave a room,” Tulauskas said. “In the same way, I want people to know it makes sense to recycle water bottles, so that it will help to make other things, such as future bottles of Poland Spring.”