Plastics
by MAURA KELLER
Plastic recycling comes with its fair share of challenges. Look around the sorting equipment in any recycling facility and you are bound to see a myriad of plastics types – some of which are recyclable, and others which are not. Plastics have long been a challenge for the recycling industry – from educating consumers on the recyclability of certain plastics to working with manufacturers to produce plastic end products that streamline the efficiency of plastic recycling.
As Manav Lahoti, global sustainability director at Dow explained, delivering circularity for hard-to-recycle plastics is a complex challenge as only two percent of U.S. households have access to curbside film and flexible plastics recycling, while demand for plastics is on track to triple by 2060.
“Under traditional methods, hard-to-recycle plastics such as mixed-polymer waste streams, medical grade plastic film, single-use food film packaging, and plastic waste that has degraded, cannot be processed through mechanical recycling techniques,” Lahoti said.
Craig Cookson, senior director, plastics sustainability at American Chemistry Council (ACC) further explained, some plastics, such as beverage bottles, milk jugs and detergent bottles, are easy for recycling facilities to sort and aggregate, and those plastics have solid and stable end markets.
“Historically, however, the challenge has been to collect, sort and find end markets for many of the non-bottle plastics,” Cookson said. “These include plastics such as films that are wrapped around paper towels and toilet paper, pouches containing snack mix or granola, and tubes containing hand cream or toothpaste.”
In 2018, Americas Plastics Makers committed to a goal that 100 percent of U.S. plastics packaging and foodservice would be recycled or recovered by 2040. To help accomplish this, the American Chemistry Council developed its Roadmap to Reuse, which recognizes that achieving this goal requires both supply and demand interventions.
“For the challenging task of collecting, sorting and pre-processing non-bottle plastics, ACC believes that enhanced networks of secondary sortation are critical to achieving success,” Cookson said. “And, according to a November 2022 McKinsey report, there is tremendous opportunity to create secondary sorting facilities that can ‘aggregate and upgrade’ used plastics to increase their quality for recyclers, especially advanced recyclers. Fixing this missing link would spur growth in the types and amounts of plastic recycled.”
Cookson also pointed to the newly formed Houston Recycling Collaboration, which is an example of a public-private partnership that plans to raise the bar for modern recycling systems. Traditionally, only about 10 percent of plastics can be recycled by mechanical methods. To change that paradigm, Houston plans to enable residents to recycle all plastics as new technologies are put in place to sort and process them. According to the program website, “This new collaboration between government, industry and the community aims to significantly increase Houston’s plastics recycling rate and help establish the city as a leader for both mechanical and advanced recycling processes.”
“Additionally, Waste Management and Dow announced they’re teaming up to allow communities to recycle plastic film at curbside, instead of store drop off,” Cookson said. “Curbside recycling could dramatically increase participation in recycling of plastic film, one of the fastest growing use of plastics.”
Finally, ACC supports producer responsibility programs that are tailored to domestic needs and circumstances, which will help fund the basic access and collection infrastructure – for plastics and all materials – as well as enhance outreach and education to inform Americans on how to recycle better.
“We also support development of national standards, as we like to say with some hyperbole that there are 9,000 recycling jurisdictions in this country doing 9,000 different things, and thus the lack of standardization creates confusion and makes it very difficult to scale plastics recycling to where we need it,” Cookson said.
Recycling Approaches Being Taken
To evolve and tackle these interconnected challenges, Lahoti further said that the industry needs to embrace a suite of recycling solutions, including mechanical and advanced recycling, as well as hybrid recycling processes.
For example, advanced recycling is one key element to growing the supply of post-consumer recycled plastics. That’s why Dow recently expanded its Mura technologies partnership to build Europe’s largest advanced
recycling facility.
“This partnership will accelerate the circular plastics economy by utilizing advanced recycling technology to process hard-to-recycle plastics such as multi-layer flexible plastics, often used in food packaging,” Lahoti said. “Advanced recycling technology unlocks previously inaccessible PCR plastic feedstocks that we can use to generate a wide variety of sustainable plastic products. And while advanced recycling has a higher carbon footprint when compared to mechanical recycling processes, the industry is laser focused on finding ways to lower it.”
Mechanical recycling still has value and should be used as it comes with lower carbon emissions at this stage – especially when combined with advanced processes. In Africa, Lahoti shared how Dow has made significant investments in Mr. Green Africa, a certified B-Corp organization dedicated to addressing critical gaps in waste management systems and enabling more plastic waste to be sorted, collected and reused.
“This partnership is expected to make plastic waste recovery notably more efficient in a region that has extremely limited or nonexistent recycling infrastructure particularly for plastics,” Lahoti said. Mr. Green Africa processes locally collected plastic waste into high-quality PCR (post consumer recyclates), which are then sold for use in place of imported virgin plastics. PCR offers a blend of high-concentration formulation and robust high-performance resin, which provides a single pellet with enhanced performance and processability.
Another example is hybrid-recycling, which, in short, is a facility that provides mechanical and advanced processes.
“Solving problems with ‘challenging’ plastics will also require unlocking supply to make it a valued commodity,” Lahoti said. “As we all know, the material is out there but it’s going to the wrong place, incineration or landfill. Dow is working on ways to unlock or prevent waste plastic supply from leaking into the environment.”
On the demand side, Cookson said innovative technologies such as advanced recycling are needed to recycle these plastics and create new top-quality plastics from them, reducing our reliance on natural resources compared to traditional plastics manufacturing and allowing us to remake new products from used “hard-to-recycle” plastics.
“Advanced recycling technologies can take these hard-to-recycle plastics and break them down into their basic chemical building blocks, enabling them to be remade into virgin-equivalent plastics again,” Cookson said.
Dow boasts a five-pillar strategy, starting with Design for Recyclability. During 2022, Dow demonstrated that recyclable structures were possible for 16 packaging applications in their portfolio that were previously considered unrecyclable. This represents a 30 percent transition rate compared to 2021.
“By focusing on Designing for Recyclability, we have helped to expand the boundaries of polyethylene for pet food packaging to ensure that all our mono-material PE-films meet the machinability, abuse, barrier, and shelf appeal that brand owners and consumers alike have grown accustomed to,” Lahoti said. “These mono-material flexible packaging products are much easier to recycle and have the potential to increase advanced and mechanical
recycling rates significantly.”
Looking Ahead
Nearly $7 billion in advanced recycling investments in the U.S. have been announced since 2017, showing growing commitment to recovering and remaking plastics again and again. As Cookson explained, that investment could potentially divert more than 16 billion pounds of waste from landfills each year.
“These technologies help create high-quality plastics that can meet FDA requirements for use in medical, pharmaceutical and food applications – virtually any plastic product or packaging,” Cookson said. “Finally, policymakers are also taking notice and, to date, 22 states have passed laws so that advanced recycling facilities are appropriately regulated as manufacturing operations. These laws demonstrate that policymakers want new opportunities and solutions for their constituents to be able to recycle greater amounts and more types of plastics in their communities. This feels like a transformative moment in plastics recycling. The stars are beginning to align – supply, demand, technology, and investment – and we can see a clearer path forward to achieving our 2040 goal.”
Lahoti stressed that mechanical recycling processes will still be crucial in the fight to end plastic waste.
“However, advanced recycling is the most groundbreaking new technology in recycling, with new advancements and opportunities to scale occurring frequently,” Lahoti said. “The ability to process previously unrecyclable materials, such as hard to recycle mixed plastic waste, will greatly help to close the loop in the plastics industry to create a circular economy.”
For example, Dow is helping to increase recycling rates and build upon existing recycling infrastructure through its partnership with WM. Through the partnership and a $1 billion investment made into local recycling infrastructure, an estimated 120,000 metric tons of plastic film per year will be diverted from landfills. WM and Dow are currently running a pilot program for curbside film and flexible plastics recycling in Hickory Hills, Illinois. The partnership plans to expand the program into other cities around the U.S.
As Lahoti explained, the program allows for curbside recycling for previously unrecoverable plastic materials such as bread bags, shrink wrap, and dry-cleaning bags.
“The WM infrastructure will manage collections and sorting, while Dow will contribute its expertise in material science and application development,” Lahoti said. “As part of its outreach efforts, Dow is working with its partners to promote recycling among residents. Part of the outreach includes examining how providing household communications impact the quality of materials recovered.”
Along with increased public education and investments in infrastructure to address existing gaps, Lahoti said stronger public policy around all aspects of the lifecycle chain for plastic also is needed to achieve a circular economy for plastics.
“The public and private sector will need to work hand-in-hand to address the unique needs of different places and the different challenges/bottlenecks in the recycling process through enacting strong recycling policies and supporting innovative advancements to infrastructure, scaling, and capabilities,” Lahoti said.
