Planet vs. Plastic – The World Earth Day 22nd April 2024

According to Frost & Sullivan’s 6P framework for Sustainability and Circular Economy, successful sustainable businesses approach should integrate six core components along Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. These components include Policies, Processes, People & Personas, Products, Partnerships, and Platforms. Effective synergies across these components, driven by sustainability, productivity, efficiency, and circularity or resources, create growth opportunities for new business models to push Circular Economy approach forward, supporting “good for people, good for planet, good for business” services along the plastic industry value chain.

The Key Trends Impacting Development of Circular Economy of Plastic Packaging Along the 6P Framework.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is one of the strongest drivers of the new investments across the plastic packaging value chain. The packaging manufacturers, and moreover, the FMCG companies are obligated to take responsibility for the products they release to the market. Over 80 of the global consumer packaged goods companies have committed to at least 15%—and up to 50%—recycled content in their packaging by 2050. We see companies like Unilever or Procter & Gamble investing into material recovery facilities, focusing on advanced soring technologies and recently these companies also investing into development of efficient chemical recycling technologies.

The right actions can bring growth in productivity and sustainability but need to be implemented across right sectors, markets, and must fit-for-purpose. The top 5 intervention areas to limit plastic pollution must include: 1. reduction in waste generation and littering; 2. encourage multi-use, reuse & refill; 3. incorporating full recyclability of packaging; 4. incorporating recycled content in packaging; 5. incorporating harmonized labelling of packaging & waste containers to encourage proper sorting-at-source.

Therefore introduction of innovations and new investments across product design aa well as upstream, midstream, and downstream processes, fuelled by collaborative approach of manufacturers, consumers, and plastic end-of-life management specialists,  must include:

• Prevention with introduction of new product design, new biodegradable materials and plastic alternatives when possible;
• Introduction of reuse & refill stations, convenient for the customers as well as all the stakeholders along the value chain;
• Integration of efficient packaging collection schemes, including Deposit Return Schemes (DRS);
• Ongoing development of mechanical recycling for plastics with key focus on advanced sorting;
• Continuing R&D on chemical recycling to complement efficiency in Circular Economy of plastics and recover hard-to-recycle materials, MRF's reject streams, and microplastics;
• Progressing digitalization across the plastic packaging value chain, with greater adoption of advanced robotics & AI-based sorting technologies to perform complex sorting tasks is expected to bring higher productivity and provide valuable operational insights, introducing satellite imagery, remote sensing and AI data to track progress in reduction of littering across cities as well as introducing data-based operation fuelled by resource data management platforms, material flow analysers, and blockchain-based material passport technologies to track and trace resources across the value chain and product lifecycle.

We need to remember that the key success factors of the Circular Economy are based on the holistic approach to management of resources and the collaborative, innovative and circular plastic industry fuelled by self-driven supply chains must be an integral part of it. We need to change the way we use and manage plastic and effectively introduce solutions that will be beneficial for the environment and for the economy but, most importantly, for the users.

Frost & Sullivan has recently published two reports on the growth opportunities across the plastic packaging waste:

·       Global Mechanical Recycling of Plastic Packaging Waste

·       Global Circular Economy of Chemical Recycling of Plastic Packaging

 Reach out to know more.

Paulina Blaszczyk , Fredrick Royan , Christeena Thomas , Brian Balmer , Victoria Courtade , Julieta Páez , Aditya Krishnan