July was supposed to be plastic-free but the news was anything but. By David Burrows
The Package is back after an enforced summer break (July was reportedly a ‘plastic-free’ month). Meantime, our inbox filled with anti-plastic PR puffery. Favourites among the pile were “Plastic-free is the future, not just for July” and“It’s 2022, so why are brands still using plastic?” There were also rants on social media. “I simply don’t understand why cafés continue to serve food and drinks in #SingleUsePackaging; and even more so, when customers are eating in,” read one. These coffee shops “are ignoring the climate emergency”.
In fact, the continued use of disposable packaging is (for many operators) down to the staffing emergency the foodservice sector is facing: single-use means people aren’t needed to wash up, the owner of one local café told us (there was absolutely no mention of any persisting hygiene concerns following the pandemic). Given the price of packaging the continued reliance on single-use isn’t ideal, he added.
Some countries want to ban disposables being used when dining-in (France is leading the charge; the UK government meanwhile is consulting on the concept). There are even noises that revisions of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive could see reusables becoming mandatory for takeaways (delivery, drive-thru and on-the-go). That would be a terrible idea, said the European Paper Packaging Alliance (EPPA).
Mandatory reusable packaging in takeaway services “would be more burdensome for the environment than continuing to use single-use paper-based packaging”, the alliance said following another study that – surprise surprise – showed single-use paper packaging is more sustainable than reusables. The “meta-study” of 26 studies has confused some experts (and not just because it isn’t available on the EPPA’s website). The Package was sent a copy and we asked LCA experts what they thought. It’s … “bizarre” said one. Both its scope and approach were deemed questionable – the dubious data used for the efficiency of dishwashers and distances journeyed to off-site cleaning facilities were among the issues raised.
Fibre frenzy
The EPPA has form in using life cycle assessments to promote paper packaging via overly simplistic (and some might say misleading) promotional materials. Paper has successfully pushed a lot of plastic packaging out of shops and restaurants. DS Smith recently said it has “designed out over 313 million pieces of problem plastics in the last two years” as it “leads the plastic replacement fight”. Switches include ready-meal trays, plastic fruit and vegetable punnets and plastic six-pack rings that “pollute the planet”. This is what people want, a press release screamed.
People do like paper, which has had a fairly easy ride as plastic takes a battering. But the honeymoon is drawing to an end. Questions are being asked of the chemicals used in paper production as well as the credibility of sustainable supply chains as demand (and prices) rise.
However, it’s water use that is likely to be behind the coming wave of scrutiny. “[…] companies who are making the necessary shift from plastic but are choosing to replace that with paper packaging are trading one environmental disaster for another,” Tamara Stark from forest conservation network Canopy told Packaging Insights. The pulping process requires massive amounts of water, the article explains, while the use of fast-growing non-native trees also sucks up water and can alter the micro-climate, noted the Environmental Paper Network. There must be more focus on the use of non-wood fibres like those from agricultural waste, it added.
Oh crap
Levels of plastics found on farms and in soils is a hot topic (it’s not all about marine pollution anymore). And so to sewage sludge – a waste spread to land for years in a practice water firms tout as a superb example of the circular economy and a way to reduce reliance on man-made fertilisers. They have a point. But there’s also a problem.
Over 750,000 tonnes of sewage sludge was spread to 150,376 hectares of land last year, according to figures recently released by the Environment Agency. But research published in the journal Environmental Pollution suggests a “shocking” 1% of that is microplastics. Banning the use of valuable organic matter mightn’t be sensible given the plight of soils, but something surely has to be done to sift out more of the plastics before spreading to land.
Defra, which is considering the study’s findings “carefully”, pointed to the relevant regulations that say this sludge can’t be used in a way that harms soil quality and surface and groundwater. Understanding of the harm caused by all this microplastic remains thin on the ground though (leaving Defra officials with little to do other than shrug their shoulders and run sweepstakes on the makeup of their new ministerial team as Truss and Sunak tussle for Number 10).
Researchers in the Netherlands that found microplastics in three-quarters of the 16 beef and pork products they tested said their study (for the Plastic Soup Foundation) “gives clear indications for plastic exposure of livestock and possibly humans” with feed thought to be the cause for the contamination. But “no conclusions can be drawn regarding any potential health risks of these findings for the animals” or people eating them.
What we don’t know won’t hurt us. Or will it? Stephen Fry certainly thinks so. “Let’s stop the flow of plastics into our seas, into our bodies and into our blood,” he says in an eerie new animation for Common Seas – a charity that earlier this year co-funded research showing plastic polymers commonly used by the food sector like PET, PS and PE were in human blood. Common Seas (together with 80 scientists and NGOs) is now pushing for £15m (0.1% of the UK government’s total investment on R&D) to be dedicated to a national plastic health impact research fund.
Counting on the government
Also finding plastic everywhere during plastic-free month were those involved in this year’s Big Plastics Count. Some 250,000 people picked through their packaging with each household chucking 66 pieces of plastic away every week. That’s 100 billion pieces nationally, of which 12% are recycled (no data was collected on other packaging because that’s all readily recycled, right?). Count masters Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic called on the government to set a reduction target of 50% by 2025 for all single-use plastic.
Spoiler alert: that won’t happen. But NGOs will be applying pressure to get one in the global Plastics Treaty. The voluntary Plastics Pact run by Wrap avoided a plastic reduction target too. Four years on from its inception members are still looking for (and receiving) praise for things like removing plastic wrapping from multipacks.
The OECD reckons that plastic use and waste are both expected to triple by 2060 – and most of the waste will be from products, like packaging, with short lifespans. What’s more, plastics lifecycle emissions are projected to increase from 1.8GtCO2e in 2019 to 4.3GtCO2e in 2060 (or from 3.7% to 4.5% of global emissions), according to a teaser for its new global outlook which will be published in full later this year. Taxing plastics use could curb consumption by 20%, while subsidies and incentives for using recycled content could lift recycling rates to 40%. Without radical action recycling rates for plastics will rise from just 9% in 2019 to 17% in 2060.
Double in trouble
But back to the here and now. New waste minister Steve Double has used new figures on plastic bags to tell us that he will keep fighting the good fight on plastic pollution (but, we assume, ignore other tougher issues such as reducing all single-use packaging).
That the 10p charge on bags has turned the tide on plastic waste is the go-to press release for new arrivals at Defra HQ – but NGOs smell a rat. Sian Sutherland from a Plastic Planet didn’t want to be a “Debbie downer” (her words) but wondered whether more plastic by weight is being dished out: numbers of thinner bags have been dramatically reduced, she told Edie, but Defra’s data don’t show the “billions of bags for life” that are now being used.
Greenpeace suggested we all deserve far better than a government that bans one token plastic item every three years and pats itself on the back. See you next month.
