EP188. The great plastic recycling myth

So I grew up in the Netherlands, a country that hammered home the concept of returns and recycling when it comes to plastic. And when I was little I used to return our family's empty plastic bottles to the supermarket and I'd get a little ticket that allowed you to deduct money from your shopping bill. My mother would send me to go and do that at the back of the supermarket while she did the weekly shop. And then even when I went back for a holiday to the Netherlands a few weeks ago, one of my friends told me how people are now collecting tiny plastic bottles to take them back to the supermarket for payment because it's helping people earn some extra. Now, that attitude of returns certainly isn't found in the country where I currently live, the United Kingdom, nor have I seen it in many of the other countries I've visited. In fact, as just one example, I've been over to the United States a few times in recent years for work, and each time have just been utterly horrified when confronted with such a single use Plastic society the Waste is huge. Now, I'd say that those attitudes are also still largely present in the cosmetics industry as a whole. Many of the big players realise that they can't go on with business as usual. However, they realize that their packaging systems have to become more responsible and indeed there have been initiatives in recent years to move to a more recyclable packaging system. But even if we dispose of all of our plastics in such a way that we think they'll be recycled, what actually happens to them? Well, last week on the podcast I interviewed Dr. Suvi Hymi, co founder and CEO of Bio Based packaging company Sulapak in Finland and we discussed the global plastic waste issue and how her company is on a mission to try and eradicate it. What a big, bold mission. I love it. And Suvi said something that a few of my other guests in the past have alluded to as well. She said that there is a plastic recyclability myth, which means that people think that plastics are infinitely recyclable when actually some plastics can only be recycled once. And that is what I'm going to explore in my Opinion Piece Podcast Today. Hi, it's Lorraine d', Almayer, Chartered environmentalist, biologist and CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and these are my green Beauty opinions in which I share my takeaways from the podcast interview we released last week and set you a challenge to make the green beauty sector a better place. If you want to be the first to hear all of my latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. So, imagine you've bought a face cream in a recyclable plastic container. Once your lotion has been completely used up, you then place your jar, maybe you've washed it, you place it in a plastic recycling box and you send it on its merry way. And at this point, our part in the process stops. Right, because you, like me, probably don't really give that much thought to what happens next, as many people have, of course, been led to believe that our plastics can be and are recycled. And in some cases, that does genuinely happen. So some countries will have good plastic recycling infrastructure, but I have to say, it is quite limited. Now, apparently, Germany and South Korea have the world's highest plastic recycling rate, sitting somewhere around about the 40 to 50% percent mark. And in the UK, where I live, plastic recycling has significantly improved in recent years. I found one statistic that said in 2020, the UK recycled around about 380,000 tons of plastic bottles, which, believe it or not, is almost 30 times more than it recycled in the year 2000. So that's a good improvement. Right? But although that sounds like a lot, this only really represents 35% of all plastic waste in the UK, compared with 40% that's sent to energy recovery operations, in other words, where plastic is burned and 23% of plastics that are sent to landfill. Now, compare that with the US, where a 2021 study by Greenpeace revealed that only 5% of plastic waste was recycled and that this number appears to be steadily declining. So I think we can safely assume, based on all of this, that plastic recycling rates around the world are just simply not where they need to be. But can all plastics actually be recycled? Well, the answer to that is technically, yes, they can, although the infrastructure doesn't exist everywhere for that to be possible. So if all plastics can be recycled, does this then mean that they can be infinitely recycled? After all, aluminium can be infinitely recycled. Glass can be infinitely recycled. We know this. And as consumers, we're fed this idea that this must be possible. This infinite recyclability must be possible with all materials. And this is where the big plastic recycling myth comes in. Because it turns out that when plastic is recycled, its quality decreases. I want you to think of it as a downward spiral. So every single time you recycle plastic, you partially break down the polymer chains inside that plastic, which destabilizes the material and reduces its strength, its viscosity. So most of the time, your plastic cosmetic packaging won't actually be recycled again. Instead it will be what they call down cycled, where it's broken down into synthetic fibers for fabric or insulation or other industrial materials. So your plastic cosmetic jar, if and when it is actually recycled, is not generally going to become another plastic cosmetic jar. This is of course why the concept of returns and refills are so important, and I've touched on this many times in the podcast in the past. Now there are of course post consumer recycled plastics, so called PCR plastics, post consumer recycled, which contain recycled materials and they are used by some cosmetic brands and I do applaud those brands for trying. But these plastics obviously also won't be in a loop of infinite recyclability. Some brands use these materials because they are genuinely trying to do their best and select good packaging out of a bad bunch. And yet other brands use these types of materials just to tick the sustainability box from a marketing perspective. So I was looking at one particular packaging website that said it exactly as it is and they wrote the following sentence which I'm just going to read out for you. It said, in general, PCR packaging such as post consumer recycled plastic cannot be recycled again since it's already made from recycled materials. And this allows brands get this to fulfill their sustainability goals without relying on the consumer to recycle or compost the packaging after use. Now that one little sentence should horrify all of us because they were effectively saying, you've met your sustainability goals now, so you don't need to worry about what your customer does next with their packaging. And I could not disagree more. So my challenge to you for this week is to look at what your cosmetic packaging is made of. Go into your bathroom, pick up your bottles and your jars, turn them over, learn what materials they're made of, and then next time you want to buy a new product, make sure you take the time to discover what packaging material it's sold in. Make this part of the way you choose new beauty products. Let's start a trend of not just selecting our cosmetics based on their appearance, but also based on what they're packaged in. Thank you for listening to my Green Beauty opinions. Remember to visit the Formula botanica website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, please make sure you do so now in your favorite podcast app. Leave me a five star review if you enjoy the conversations. I host and I will be back soon with my next episode. Sam.