Tom Giddings, executive director of Alupro, discusses the fundamental differences between ‘traditional’ and chemical recycling, explores the potential for misinformation to circulate the market and explains why supply chain transparency is key to preventing consumer greenwashing.

Recycling technologies have developed significantly over the past decade, with stringent national targets and accelerating policy decisions driving widespread infrastructure improvements. Thanks to continued R&D and extensive investment, the latest MRFs feature state-of-the-art functionality and embrace pioneering systems, including advanced robotics, machine learning, blockchain, big data and even artificial intelligence (AI).

As a direct result, we’re now able to separate more accurately, process more efficiently and handle waste in greater volumes than ever before. Alongside minimising contamination, this is driving better sortation quality and improved throughputs. When you combine these developments with continued consumer education efforts, it has driven a notable uplift in recycling rates.

Take aluminium packaging, as an example. In 2023, 162,357 tonnes were recycled nationwide (68% of all material placed on the market), including more than four in five beverage cans. This is particularly impressive considering a fast-growing domestic market, with demand soaring.

As we transition towards a more resource efficient society, recycling progress should be praised. While there is considerably more work still to do, especially when it comes to consumer awareness and education, it’s hugely positive nonetheless to see recycling rates creeping up.

Yet despite impressive progress, innovation has not been limited to simply accelerating the further development of traditional recycling systems. Indeed, focus and investment has also been given to alternative practices, such as bioengineering and chemical recycling, to find new solutions to further improve waste management.

While positive on paper, there is already misinformation and inaccuracy creeping into public discourse. It’s therefore important that the correct data is presented, that transparency is encouraged and that the process is clearly regulated to prevent inaccuracies from ultimately leading to greenwashing that could bring recycling in general into disrepute.

Chemical recycling – the silver bullet for plastic waste?

As demand for convenience continues to spiral, the world’s reliance on plastic packaging is growing fast. While the practicality benefits are hard to ignore, it’s important to consider the environmental impact of plastic – in particular, when it comes to the disposal of used material.

According to the House of Commons 2024 Plastic Waste report, less than 47% of UK plastics are recycled every year (44% in 2021[1]), despite data suggesting that 73% of plastic bottles placed on the market are collected for recycling. When it comes to plastic film, this figure drops to below 4%.[2]

To tackle what is a fundamental concern, the industry is investigating alternative approaches. Chemical recycling is emerging as a popular contender, as it could enable the processing of a proportion of the difficult to recycle plastic waste that would previously have been landfilled or incinerated.

By turning plastic waste back into base chemicals and chemical feedstocks, chemical recycling processes have the potential to improve recycling rates and divert plastic waste from landfill or incineration. As a result, the industry is expected to grow from 3% in 2023 to almost 25% in 2050.[3]

So, what’s the problem?

Many are proposing chemical recycling as a perfectly viable technology to manage the ‘difficult to recycle’ fraction of plastic packaging and, to some extent, you’d be absolutely right. Indeed, while expensive, low-yielding and energy-intensive compared to traditional recycling technology, the process can take used packaging as a feedstock and extract valuable material for reprocessing.

Granted, there’s a significant amount of waste that remains unusable as a result of the process, while polymers recovered can only be used for certain applications, but the alternative of exclusively landfill or incineration feels far more environmentally damaging.

The issue lies, instead, in communication. All recycling processes use the concept of mass balance – whereby the content of the outputs of a process are measured by the proportion of the different feedstocks used to produce them. Virgin feedstock is added as an input material alongside post-consumer packaging to almost all recycling. With traditional recycling, a proportional approach is used (i.e. if input material is 50% recycled, then maximum output material can only be 50% recycled content), which means that there’s a clear link between product in and product out – trustworthy and transparent.

With chemical recycling, however, the lines are a little more blurred. With the process taking plastic back to polymers, there is no guarantee that recycled content will actually be present in the output. Despite this, products produced via the chemical recycling process can be legitimately labelled as ‘made from 100% recycled materials.’

But why is this such an issue? Well, imaging you’re cooking a bolognaise (bear with me!). You can add beef mince and a meat-free alternative, cook it together and end up with a perfectly good meal. What you can’t do is serve it up into bowls and tell people that they’re only eating the meat-free percentage and thus brand those servings as vegan friendly. That would be inaccurate at best and misleading at worst, not to mention the fact that you’d have some VERY unhappy dinner guests!

Without proper regulation, chemical recycling is being used as a simple way to offer brands exactly what they want – packaging materials cleverly labelled to tick the sustainability and plastics tax boxes. The only problem is the legitimacy of the whole process – a pretty major concern, I’d suggest.

Does the consumer know the difference between packaging made from 100% mechanically recycled material and from 100% chemically recycled material? No. Does the consumer appreciate the difference? No. Is the process transparent enough to provide the guarantee that what’s written on the label is reliable? No.

If we’re not careful, the ‘greenwash’ buzzword comes quickly into the conversation. Considering the monumental strides made over the past few years to accelerate recycling momentum in the UK, this has the potential to undermine progress and turn consumers against the industry.

Where do we go from here?

While it may seem like a clever process on the surface, measuring the recycled content from chemical recycling through mass balance shouldn’t be treated any differently to recycling by any other means. Yes, we have targets to achieve and quotas to reach, but it doesn’t offer the absolute transparency and authenticity needed – or much of it at all, to be honest. We need robust legislation to keep things harmonised and we need to police it well.

Ultimately, if we can’t do that, then nobody should be communicating with the public about the recycled content of their packaging. This would be, ironically, a terrible waste; ultimately, recycling is the one environmental aspect we can reliably communicate with the public about to persuade and inform them about sustainability.

As resources become scarcer and recycling continues to force its way up the waste management agenda, innovation, investment and robust policy are critical to delivering long-term results. Given the time and money already invested consumer education and mechanical recycling infrastructure, we mustn’t risk greenwashing the audience that we’ve tried so hard to build bridges with.

 ENDS

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/812502/plastic-packaging-waste-recycling-united-kingdom/#:~:text=The%20recycling%20rate%20of%20plastic,slowed%20down%20in%20recent%20years.

[2] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8515/CBP-8515.pdf

[3] https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/How-EPCs-and-equipment-suppliers-can-capitalize-on-chemical-recycling.html#:~:text=Average%20annual%20plant%20capacity%20growth,to%20almost%2025%20%25%20in%202050.