Bioplastics won’t replace recycling

Envir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions have been on the rise along­side increas­ingly strong soci­et­al demand for eco-friendly con­sumer goods. Even though they are respons­ible for pol­lut­ing oceans, emit­ting CO₂, and filling up land­fills, plastics are at the heart of this trans­ition; world­wide plastic pro­duc­tion is pro­jec­ted to con­tin­ue to rise by 3.2% annu­ally until 2027. 

We have seen steady growth of the recyc­ling industry in developed coun­tries over the years and per­form­ance is only get­ting bet­ter, too. In addi­tion, bioplastics offer new, dif­fer­ent pos­sib­il­it­ies. Although they cur­rently rep­res­ent just 2% of the world mar­ket in terms of value, this is quickly increas­ing. How­ever, these mater­i­als are not without their own, unique challenges.

Com­pan­ies are there­fore ask­ing them­selves how best to tackle these issues. Recyc­ling, bio-based mater­i­als, and bio­de­grad­able products offer solu­tions. To decide on their approach and strategy, man­u­fac­tur­ers are think­ing about the prob­lem in three dimen­sions while con­sid­er­ing the side effects and the prof­it­ab­il­ity of each. Olivi­er Jan and Erwan Harscoët, engin­eers and con­sult­ants at Deloitte, help com­pan­ies decide where to start.

A few years ago, envir­on­ment­al con­cerns only seemed asso­ci­ated with ‘cor­por­ate social respons­ib­il­ity’ and com­pan­ies were often labelled as gre­en­wash­ing. Is that still the case?

Olivi­er Jan: The world has changed. Not only are reg­u­la­tions now stronger in the pack­aging industry, but com­pan­ies’ license to oper­ate are at risk. Nowadays, a busi­ness can col­lapse for social or envir­on­ment­al reas­ons if con­sumers and stake­hold­ers believe its activ­ity is hav­ing haz­ard­ous con­sequences on the plan­et or its pop­u­la­tions. The entire con­sumer goods sec­tor has been par­tic­u­larly impacted. Decision-makers are pay­ing close atten­tion to con­sumers’ new expect­a­tions and mak­ing efforts to not only meet those expect­a­tions, but also get ahead of them.

As a con­sequence, busi­ness struc­tures are chan­ging, lead­ing to make com­mit­ments being made cent­rally and a gen­er­al increase in com­pet­ency, with spe­cial­ist dis­cus­sions hap­pen­ing. Giv­en how urgent it is to make these decisions, people are also becom­ing more aware that these choices are com­plex and require multi-faceted perspectives.

The com­plex­ity of the sub­ject seems to be a stra­tegic and intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge for all the stake­hold­ers we have spoken to. Can you tell us more about the specifics?

Erwan Harscoët: For most busi­nesses, their envir­on­ment­al con­cerns take the form of car­bon foot­print. But this involves dif­fer­ent issues, includ­ing depend­ence on fossil fuels and CO₂ emis­sions, of course, but also the impact on biod­iversity, con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al resources, vari­ous kinds of pol­lu­tion, and so on. All these aspects are inter­con­nec­ted and not always com­pat­ible with one anoth­er. For example, the use of bio-based mater­i­als can lead to defor­est­a­tion or reduce avail­ab­il­ity of food sources.

For plastics, the most import­ant issue is end-of-life. And the first thing that makes this more com­plic­ated is the vari­ety of poly­mers that are used, which com­plexi­fies their end-of-life.

Secondly, there are mul­tiple, large fam­il­ies of solu­tions and ‘bio-based’, is not the most widely used. It is worth not­ing that in most bio-based applic­a­tions, a bio-based product will not actu­ally have much impact on its end-of-life man­age­ment. On the oth­er hand, bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity is import­ant. It is a use­ful solu­tion for cer­tain products, such as small, light­weight pieces of pack­aging made from soft plastic that are hard to col­lect and eas­ily fly away in the wind. The advant­age in using bio­de­grad­able mater­i­als here is that if their end-of-life is badly man­aged, they will still break down by themselves.

Moreover, for products likely to end up in the ocean, being bio­de­grad­able is an ideal solu­tion. This is espe­cially true in the many coun­tries where rub­bish col­lec­tion is non-exist­ent or inform­al (with people scav­en­ging for cer­tain waste products in land­fills). For example, res­ins made from PHA (poly­hy­droxyalkanoates) break down quickly and effect­ively in sea­wa­ter. But, if we want to make a product bio­de­grad­able in this way, oth­er char­ac­ter­ist­ics will be lost – spe­cific­ally, the pro­tect­ive­ness of the plastic. Weigh­ing up dif­fer­ent kinds of per­form­ance in com­bin­a­tion with eco­nom­ic factors is the third com­plic­at­ing factor.

Do we neces­sar­ily have to decide between dif­fer­ent kinds of per­form­ance? What about think­ing out­side the box?

EH: We can try to think dif­fer­ently by chan­ging per­spect­ive. For example, you could only mar­ket plastics that are valu­able enough for people to be inter­ested in col­lect­ing and recyc­ling them, like bottles made from trans­par­ent PET.

If we look at Ger­many, some stake­hold­ers are call­ing for the return of the con­tain­er-depos­it scheme, which was, after all, an old cir­cu­lar eco­nomy approach. But some act­ors in the industry are not in favor of that approach – now, with plastic bottles going into chan­nels for select­ive sort­ing, enough value is added for the recyc­ling of all plastic pack­aging to be cheaper.

OJ. For the argu­ment to work here, you have to con­sider the entire value chain and take all costs into account, as well as scale effects. The same logic applies to bioplastics pro­duc­tion. We need new tech­no­lo­gies to devel­op new kinds of mater­i­als, but we also have to ques­tion the entire value chain. This goes from the new pro­duc­tion pro­cesses for bio-based resources, and wheth­er they meet cer­tain envir­on­ment­al and social cri­ter­ia, to the end-of-life phase of these new mater­i­als, and the ways they could be col­lec­ted and recycled. Some mar­ket seg­ments that have great­er means at their dis­pos­al or are under more reg­u­lat­ory pres­sure – such as food pack­aging – can lead the way for oth­er sectors.

With recyc­ling, for instance, bever­age man­u­fac­tur­ers play a par­tic­u­larly sig­ni­fic­ant role. This industry is very prom­in­ent and was the first to be cri­ti­cized for play­ing a role in mar­ine pol­lu­tion. Con­sequently, it was the first to invest in devel­op­ing new recyc­ling tech­no­lo­gies that bene­fit­ted oth­er seg­ments of the pack­aging sec­tor and oth­er products. Sim­il­arly, depoly­mer­isa­tion tech­no­lo­gies that are cur­rently in devel­op­ment will also advance the recyc­ling cap­ab­il­it­ies for plastic con­tain­ers used by oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, and syn­thet­ic tex­tiles, which at present can­not be recycled.

Do busi­nesses under­stand these eco­nom­ic arguments?

OJ. There is much vari­ation from one sec­tor to anoth­er. We see a real dif­fer­ence in matur­ity between man­u­fac­tur­ers, with new arrivals some­times show­ing a cer­tain naiv­ety. For example, the tex­tile industry has recently become a lot more com­mit­ted. More announce­ments are being made, either about mak­ing products from nat­ur­al resources (bio-based mater­i­als) or about the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy (recycled mater­i­als). But the com­pan­ies that use pack­aging like plastic bottles, are now going to be mak­ing every effort to col­lect them and use the recycled mater­i­al for their own products. So, the tex­tile industry is going to be run­ning short on recycled mater­i­als if they want to scale this approach up, and they will have to devel­op their own channels.

The dif­fer­ent argu­ments, indus­tries and approaches (recyc­ling or bio­de­grad­able products) can all co-exist. That being said, they aren’t always inter­con­nec­ted. But they can be, espe­cially in the case of com­pan­ies that know and under­stand each oth­er. This could lead to bio-based mater­i­als for which the end-of-life has also been factored into the equa­tion, or man­u­fac­tur­ers from the same sec­tor that bring their products in line with one anoth­er, opt­ing for sim­pler com­pon­ents, using only recyc­lable mater­i­als, etc. This has been observed in the con­sumer goods sec­tor and should carry over to oth­er mar­kets, such as the auto­mot­ive industry.