The process of recycling is, by its nature, complicated. We put our mix of rubbish in the right bins, and from that point onwards hope that those we entrust it to – be it local councils picking up rubbish or supermarket recycling schemes – will do the rest. If this is you, then you may be dismayed to learn that a recent Everyday Plastics report found that most soft plastics collected by two of Britain’s biggest supermarkets are not being recycled and are, instead, incinerated.
Soft plastics are anything flimsy that you can scrunch in your hand: think bread bags, pouches, clingfilm, chocolate wrappers and crisp packets. But as this latest report shows, they aren’t as easily recyclable as you might think. Here’s why.
When it came to the collection of soft plastics for recycling, supermarkets wanted to make our lives simple. Had their collection bins read “clear, low-density polyethylene only”, I am not sure my local Tesco would consistently fill huge metal trolleys with soft plastic. The supermarkets opted instead for the simpler label “soft plastic”, and consumers in their masses understood what that meant and brought it back in all its various forms.
The inevitable consequence of this simple messaging is that the retailers have to do more work: the plastic has to be sent for sorting because we are not sorting it for them. The valuable, high-quality material they are looking for (uncontaminated mono-material) is recycled, while the rest is likely to be incinerated or downcycled. That is a bitter pill for the public to swallow, when they have so diligently brought their plastic back. But it is understandable that the messaging usually takes the form of “please bring your plastic here” rather than the perhaps more truthful (albeit depressing) “we burn some of this”.
So where is the plastic sorted? Often in other countries where sorting by hand is cheaper. Once sorted, some soft plastics might be incinerated to generate electricity because it is not economical to recycle them, others are downcycled into bin liners, or the melted plastic is compressed to make alternatives to wood. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because soft plastic we have used once may be downcycled, or redeployed in place of a raw material. It is important to note that soft plastic is often deemed unsafe for reuse as food packaging because of Britain’s high safety standards.
As consumers, we need to understand that the economics of recycling, once it leaves our kerbside or supermarket recycle centre, are frustratingly challenging. Technically, all materials can be recycled: everything can be broken down to its constituent parts and smashed up, melted and reformed. But for soft plastic, a lightweight and easy-to-create material that has an inherently low value, the economics make it difficult to justify the significant cost of collection, transportation and processing.
This makes plastic one of the most environmentally damaging materials: its abundance and low cost lead people to discard it readily, without a care for the environmental consequences. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recycle it. We need to capture plastic in order to give it the best chance of being recycled, even if some of it ends up being used to create energy. This is what the big retailers intended because collecting it, even for incineration, is better than sending it to landfill.
It’s vital that we have transparency about recycling, and we as consumers need to be receptive to that, even when the truth isn’t as convenient as we would like. The current difficulties we face with soft plastic don’t mean we should reject it entirely. While soft plastic may be far from perfect, and our recycling efforts still have some way to go, non-plastic alternatives such as a tin can for cat food (when compared with a pouch), can be much heavier and could require more energy to recycle. As such, its collection, transportation and processing may lead to increased carbon emissions.
We should be wary of demonising plastic without subjecting other materials to the same level of scrutiny. I find pubs and restaurants more willing to offer paper straws to customers – far more than they were with plastic straws. The result is potentially more waste than before. Let us not pretend that simply using an alternative to plastic is a panacea.
So how do we ensure that less soft plastic ends up in an incinerator? Well, we need to rebalance the economics. The government must restrict exports of waste and maintain its commitment to collect flexible plastic from kerbsides in England by 2027. This would ensure that soft plastic is collected in significant volumes, drive innovation and investment into the UK recycling system, and ultimately increase the value of soft plastic to the waste companies dealing with it. This would be far preferable to ending the use of what is a lightweight and incredibly efficient piece of packaging.
Regardless of whether it is destined to be incinerated for energy, reformed into a park bench or turned into a new piece of packaging, I will continue to stuff it in a bread bag each week and take it to my local supermarket. All in the knowledge that collecting this plastic and sending it off somewhere useful is far better than landfill.
