In the last few years, brands, governments, and industry associations across Europe have pledged to increase the rate of recycling and use of recycled material within packaging. The EU Circular Economy Action Plan aims to “ensure that all packaging on the EU market is reusable or recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030.” How is it going?
Glass –
Close the Glass Loop, a program of the glass and recycling industry, announced in June 2022 that the glass packaging collection rate hit 80% in Europe in 2020. The data included EU member nations, the UK, and several neighboring countries including Switzerland and Turkey. The glass packaging collection rate was over 100% in Belgium and Estonia – more glass bottles and jars were collected in 2020 than was estimated sold within the country that year – and over 90% in 8 other nations. The lowest collection rate was in Turkey at 14%, followed by Hungary, Greece, and Cyprus which collected about one-third of their glass packaging.
Glass collection does not always guarantee the glass is recycled. Glass can be contaminated when other materials are thrown in with the recycling, and different colored glass mixed together is more difficult to recycle. But even so, Close the Glass Loop writes that “the vast majority of the 13.8 million tons collected go back to remelt new bottles and jars.”
Paper and board –
According to the European Paper Recycling Council, “in 2020, 73.9% of all paper and board consumed in Europe was recycled.” The Council says that paper recycling rates “are now starting to reach a theoretical maximum” due to “different patterns in consumption, new technologies, and diversified applications of paper-based solutions.” Despite this, on June 30, 2022, they published the European Declaration on Paper Recycling 2021-2030, a joint initiative of 12 European associations in the paper and board, tape, ink, adhesive, and recycling industries, to reach a 76% paper recycling rate by 2030.
The European Paper Recycling Council’s numbers include all paper products in Europe, but according to reporting from Euractiv, paper packaging already has an 82% recycling rate. Even so, 4evergreen, another collaboration in the paper value chain has a goal of reaching “90% recycling rate for fiber-based packaging by 2030.”
Plastic –
Beverage and other food companies including Danone, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi Co. have pledged to increase the content of recycled plastics in their bottles and containers (BRID) by 2025 or 2030. However, according to Suntory Beverage and Food GB&I, if all European manufacturers attempt to switch to 100% recycled bottles, Europe will need three times more recycled plastic than what is currently available. In 2020, approximately 61% of PET bottles were recycled in Europe, according to Plastic Recyclers Europe, and “collection and sorting rates for beverage bottles will need to increase for many Member States in order to meet the Single Use Plastics Directive targets.”
However in a recent press release, Plastics Recyclers Europe reports that despite decreased waste exports from Europe, increased investment in recycling infrastructure, and the growing price of recycled plastic, “no substantial additional quantities of waste are being sent to recyclers today.” They report that less than one-third of all plastic waste (including electronics and other goods) in Europe is collected for sorting.
DW in partnership with the European Data Journalism Network investigated “98 plastics commitments from 24 food and drink companies headquartered in Europe that were made during the past 20 years.” The difficulty in collecting and recycling plastic for food contact uses is reflected in the fact that for the 37 pledges DW found that should have already been completed, “68% either clearly failed or were never reported on again.”
Another inherent limitation is that plastic drinks bottles made of PET and HDPE that are properly recycled can only be melted and reformed a limited number of times, and the recycling process itself can increase contaminants (FPF reported, also here and here). Additionally, plastics, especially recycled plastics, are more highly regulated in the EU compared to other material types which may be an additional factor in the difference in recycling rates between materials. Other types of plastic packaging, like films, are difficult to recycle and investigations have found that while companies in Europe may collect plastic films for recycling, the plastic often ultimately ends up being burned or otherwise improperly disposed of (FPF reported, also here).
Concerns around single-use plastics are driving the ongoing negotiations of the International Plastics Treaty (FPF reported), and there are increasing calls throughout the EU to reduce plastic production and incorporate reusable packaging systems into everyday life (FPF reported, also here). The Food Packaging Forum produced a series of fact sheets on the recycling properties and processes of five common food packaging materials.
References
DW Planet A (October 14, 2022). “How these companies tried to greenwash their plastic waste.” YouTube
Kira Schacht (August 9, 2022). “European food companies break their plastics promises.” DW
Frédéric Simon (July 7, 2022). “Recycling cannot meet 100% of demand for packaging, EU official cautions.” Euractiv
Close the Glass Loop (June 30, 2022). “Europe’s glass value chain reaches a major milestone at 80% glass collection for recycling.”
Plastics Recyclers Europe (June 14, 2022). “Plastic recyclers in Europe struggle to get enough plastic waste.”
European Paper Recycling Council (June 2022). “European declaration on paper recycling 2021-2030.”
E&T editorial staff (May 27, 2022). “Soft drinks industry faces a recycled plastic shortage, says Ribena maker.” Engineering & Technology
Plastics Recyclers Europe (January 2022). “PET market in Europe: State of play 2022.” (pdf)
Read more
Elizabeth Bennett (August 8, 2022). “Grey is the new green: how to spot recycled plastic.” The Guardian
Recycling Magazine (July 6, 2022). “PET reuse state of play.”
Brian Taylor (July 4, 2022). “Europe goes all in on paper and board circularity.” Recycling Today
Hubbub (June 2022). “Reuse systems unpacked: Challenges and opportunities for food and drink packaging.”
MM Board & Paper (May 27, 2022). “Paper fibres – Recycling without limits.”
Vanessa O’connell and Uday Sampath Kumar (December 4, 2021). “P&G faces shortage of recycled plastic in race to meet sustainability goals.” Reuters
Agnusdei, GP, et al. (2022). “Are deposit-refund systems effective in managing glass packaging? State of the art and future directions in Europe.” Science of the Total Environment. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158256
