European conference speakers push for plastics recycling changes

The consensus among some of Europe’s leading plastics industry commentators at the Circularity for Polymers: The ICIS Recycling Conference, which took place Nov. 5 in Berlin, was that the plastics industry is changing because it must.

Commentators at the event noted that “plastiphobia” has emerged as a public concern, and many regulators are now cracking down on the plastics industry as a result. The plastics industry is very aware of these concerns: new directive targets must be met; new processes researched, developed and launched; and consumer education must be delivered on plastics and plastics recycling, the speakers said. 

During the Circularity for Polymers: ICIS Recycling Conference, Paul Hodges, chairman of U.K.-based International EChem, said the industry needs to do a lot of work in a limited time.

“It’s very clear there’s a paradigm shift going on in the industry,” he said. “Companies are waking up to the fact that waste plastics are a really big issue—one that’s not going to go away. Single-use plastics are going to be in the firing line for the next few years, and business models simply must change.”

He added that people don’t know how to recycle plastics, but people do understand why that action is necessary. “We haven’t got the technology available,” Hodges said. “We haven’t got the collection processes set up. We need to move away from throwing rubbish away at waste sites and focus instead on developing resource centers based on a distributed network of local chemical recycling plants.”

The move toward smaller, local chemical recycling plants, which are more effective at separating different types of plastic, is certainly on the horizon, yet that’s still only a nascent industry, he said.

Discussion on chemical recycling

Richard Daley, managing director of U.K.-based ReNew ELP, stated that ReNew is on the cutting edge of chemical recycling. The company is in the final stages of developing the first of four chemical recycling lines, with each line processing about 20,000 metric tons per year. The company’s Cat-HTR technology uses what Daley described as “a unique hydrothermal upgrading process using supercritical water to break down plastics into reusable, valuable chemicals and oils.”

The target feedstock for processing is the residual plastic that remains after mechanical recycling has taken place, such as flexible, multilayer films—and ReNew ELP considers itself as complementary to the mechanical recycling process, Daley said.

“Chemical recovery is better in theory, but there are issues with cost and yield,” added Mark Victory, senior editor of recycling at ICIS. “In theory, it’s good, but there are still the same challenges of collection, and it will be five to 10 years … before we see large scale chemical recovery.”

Collection concerns

During the event, Victory identified another hurdle—collection is insufficient. He reported that local authorities have generally been underfunded since the global economic downturn about a decade ago, and investment in infrastructure has not kept pace with the growing complexity of packaging. He said that domestic issue is further exacerbated by China’s decision to stop accepting plastic scrap from the rest of the world. 

“Investment in waste collection hasn’t kept pace with the increasing complexity of packaging,” Victory said. “And since China stopped accepting waste, there’s more contamination in our domestic recycling; wastage rates have increased because China used to take the lower quality waste material, which they could use in industries such as textile, but is now being incorporated in to domestic bales. The scale of demand and size of the undersupply is also meaning material is having to be produced at maximum capacity and stretched further, which also has an impact on contamination levels. In recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), for example, we’ve seen wastage rates increase from 25 percent in 2009 to 30-35 percent currently.”

Working with brand owners

Hodges said the industry urgently needs project teams to work out how to produce more sustainable products and better recycling collection and processing facilities. “We’ve got 18 months to work this out,” he said. “If we don’t do it, brand owners are going to say, ‘Look, we’ve made a commitment to the consumers to have this done by 2025. You’re not moving. So, we’re going to have to do something else.’ We have six years to work this out, and we don’t know what to do.”

Hodges added that the brand owners that have commitments to 2025 deadlines need reassurance from the plastics industry. “We need to reach out to brand owners and say we have got the technology sorted out, the business model sorted out and the finance sorted out, so trust us, we will now deliver so you can deliver what you need to do."

ICIS Senior Analyst of Plastics Recycling Helen McGeough added that plastic packaging is more complex than ever before. She said it needs to be simplified and the industry must “encourage recycling concepts at the design stage.”

McGeough added, “The EU has set the bar high with the Single Use Plastic Directive, requiring higher collection rates even with 2018 recovery rates for PET bottles in Europe at 63 percent and 55 percent in the U.K. The European country PET collection rates range vary across member states, reflecting the differences in systems, consumer participation and government ability to prioritize investment in waste management. This lack of standardization in everything from waste infrastructure to final rPET product specification continue to present as many challenges as opportunities for one of the most developed recycled markets in the plastic industry.” 

Victory added that the sector “needs heavy investment” to catch up across the entire chain. “There’s no point in everyone wanting to recycle if the infrastructure isn’t there,” he said. “We are relying on people to understand and embrace recycling systems, which is hard to predict. There’s a strong education element to it. For most people, plastic is simply plastic—they are unaware of the different types and what to do with it.”

Hodges concurred on the need for investment, suggesting the industry needs to provide funding. He said he sees the biggest industry challenge as the shift from mechanical recycling plants to smaller, local chemical recycling plants. “The new industry business model is small scale and local, whereas for the last 30 to 40 years, all we’ve talked about is massive and global, and this is a complete game changer,” Hodges said.

ICIS, headquartered in London, is a large petrochemical market information provider with divisions spanning energy and fertilizers.