Unfulfilled Promise Of Plastic Film Recycling

The pandemic has stimulated an increase in the use of plastic bags, as the already limited retail recycling options have become scarcer. Stakeholders from all sides believe that it is time to come up with new ideas.

Last spring, as the coronavirus restrictions lifted the ban on disposable bags, plastic film once again became the focus of attention. This thin and flexible plastic sheet is known for its use in grocery bags, but it is also widely used for a variety of purposes from packaging on Twinkies to foam packaging.

Alison Keane, President and CEO of the Flexible Packaging Association, said: “From the perspective of health, hygiene, and aseptic safety, many people actually re-use reusable shopping bags for COVID. Disposable bags.” The film’s ability to maintain good condition during transportation and keep perishable items fresh, and at the same time score high in the life cycle assessment, is why people’s interest in it continues to grow.

However, the same concerns — on health, hygiene and infertility — have another unforeseen impact. With more and more reasons to use plastic film, the already limited recycling options seem to disappear.

"Many stores have thrown away the recycling bins at the front desk," Keane said. "This is an unfortunate aspect."

Because they can damage recycling equipment and contaminate bales, plastic films and packaging materials have long been undesirable items in most roadside streams. On the contrary, the plastics industry advocates placing a trash can system in front of supermarkets and large retailers as an alternative recycling method. When consumers participate, they will store this material at home and bring it with them.

Critics’ list of complaints about the recycling program includes everything from inconvenience and low participation rates to high levels of pollution, which some say makes the contents of the trash can unacceptable.

"They can't use COVID-19 as an excuse at all," said Jan Dell, an independent engineer and founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, a non-profit organization.

Dell has been monitoring the effectiveness of the recycling bin. In one example, she went to a retailer listed on the California State Packaging Recycling Action Program (WRAP) website, which was initiated by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in 2013 to raise awareness of the recyclability of plastic film .

“In an area that can accommodate 1.6 million people, there should be 52,” she said. "We only found 18." It was this scarcity that prompted California to end its legal requirement that stores must recycle trash bins in January 2020. WRAP’s website states that due to “changing circumstances, stores may discontinue their plans...without notice.”

Dell and others worry that the problems of the plan extend far beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the more terrifying situation is masked by plastic film recycling in general. Industry commentators and stakeholders recognize that the current end market cannot handle the large amount of plastic film produced every year: according to the latest ACC report, it was 9 billion pounds in 2018.

Although some people advocate the adoption of legislation and the establishment of sustainable development goals to maintain the system and improve the end market, others say that it is time to abandon the ship. Some in this camp like chemical recycling alternatives, which they say will simplify the waste sorting process. Others, such as Dell, tend to simply dispose of the film until it can be replaced with other packaging materials.

At the same time, the ambiguity of the recyclability of plastic films, bags, and packaging materials can lead to the unfortunate consequences of materials eventually entering roadside bins: the store drop-off program was originally designed to help bypass this flow.

In the past ten years, the recycling industry has simplified the sorting process and turned to single-stream collection in many areas. Plastic film has largely not been part of this trend, because recyclers do not want to use it in their traditional roadside streams. To their frustration, it usually ends up there, and workers have to take the risk to try to remove it from the MRF equipment.

However, filmmakers, including companies represented by the American Chemistry Council, do not want it to enter a landfill or incinerator. Polyethylene, the single material that makes most films, wraps, and bags, is theoretically highly recyclable. ACC's plastics department announced in 2018 a goal of 100% plastic "recyclable or recyclable" by 2030.

According to Craig Cookson, senior director of recycling and recycling at ACC, several key elements of the plan include “how to strengthen the collection and sorting of more challenging types of plastic, such as film.” As brands and retailers increase the recyclability of packaging Increasing pressure—for example, Wal-Mart’s promise that 100% of its packaging will be recyclable by 2025—makes the film more recyclable will help ensure its continued popularity throughout the consumer sector.

The solution for the past ten years has been to treat plastic film as a separate category and develop specific collection, sorting and recycling rules. For consumers, these rules mainly revolve around store bins (although ACC has also recently invested in roadside recycling pilots for certain types of film).

"There is a whole set of polyethylene film with an infrastructure for recycling through retail recycling," said Shari Jackson, ACC film recycling director who oversees WRAP. "We are working hard to optimize the system to collect and recycle more existing materials to support existing end markets and emerging markets."

ACC has also established alliances and partnerships with the goal of strengthening public education about film recycling. Examples include the 2016 memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or funding infrastructure, such as the “Accelerated Recycling” proposal of the Recycling Partnership, which raises packaging fees to help pay for more recycling infrastructure and education.

Since the ACC began monitoring it in 2005, film collections have increased by 54%. This is not just from recycling bins, but comprehensive, including shrink packaging from back-end shipping pallets, films used in agriculture, and even items picked out of things accidentally placed in roadside bins in MRF.

But considering that plastic films are widely popular in almost every part of the consumer experience, only a small part is collected. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in 2018, Americans produced nearly 9 billion pounds of PE film, bags, and packaging materials each year. Some people think this number may be much higher, and point out that in California data, in one state alone, film constitutes 2.6 billion pounds of waste stream. In EPA's 2018 data, only 11% of film was recycled. Among them, the contents of retail bags and films reached 242 million pounds.

"This is not just a recycling bin," Dell said when criticizing its effectiveness. "This is because no one actually buys this material. It is contaminated."

Not only are trash bins often mistaken for trash cans, they also attract non-film items that contaminate materials with leftover food or liquid; sometimes, due to labeling practices, even fully recyclable films are unacceptable at the point of sale.

"We don't want them to be there," Jackson said, referring to the stickers that many retailers and distributors put on products made of plastic film-such as barcodes or shipping labels. "Put the material itself there without stickers, all of which help improve quality."

Dell said that many film terminal markets have specifications that are much higher than the ones that are ultimately put in the trash can. She specifically mentioned Trex, a company that produces alternative decorative panels and uses film as the raw material for its products. Alternative wood accounts for 46% of the PE film end market, and Trex is the leading producer in this market. However, its quality specifications include everything from cleanliness (no moisture, food or loose paper) to color requirements ("blue bag content less than 5%"), which Dell considers to be an almost impossible standard for recycling bins.

Jackson did not determine the average pollution rate in these bins, but said that educational activities have played a big role in improving quality, and referred to the 2018 ACC and Connecticut initiative to achieve positive results. She also stated that Trex does use post-consumer materials with back-office commercial post-films, and pointed out that ACC is developing new end-use recycling films to reduce specifications, such as asphalt.

"This has been done in other countries and piloted here. But it is another large-scale end use of the material," Jackson said.

Eadaoin Quinn is the Director of Business Development and Purchasing for Canada-based EFS-Plastics. The company is responsible for purchasing post-consumer films and processing them into new film applications. She said this is "a higher-end product that allows us to handle Some more contaminated materials."

Quinn supports the concept of trash can collection, especially when collecting with backstage movies, because reverse logistics is already in progress.

"From my point of view, store recycling programs are the preferred way to recycle film," she said, and believes that although recycling bins may look dirty, they are a better choice than letting the film enter the traditional recycling stream .

At the same time, she also stated that collecting movies from the store recycling program as an independent concept has no real economic significance.

"If it's just the store taking it back, it will be difficult to reach the quantity required to make a truck, and it will be too much polluted."

70% to 80% of the bales collected by EFS-Plastics consist of "backstage shrink wrap", a transparent film used to cover shipping pallets containing goods from supermarkets and large stores. Quinn described this material as more uniform and reliable.

"Generally speaking, this is what people buy, and they know it is mainly shrinking, and there are some other materials," she said.

But Quinn said the trash can was also the least worried about her. What keeps her awake at night is a higher level of economics, especially when oil prices continue to fall. This reduces the cost of virgin plastics and reduces the competitiveness of the plastic recycling market in the entire field. "Demand is the first issue we need to discuss," she said.

"I think that in general, we have dealt with the challenge of film recycling in the opposite direction," Quinn said. "People have always been very concerned about where they put their plastic bags after use and where they go. Haven't really considered whether they will actually use it in North America to turn it into something new? Which is more important to me? The problem."

In the past two years, the international market, which once accounted for more than half of all end markets for recycled film, has plummeted. This is seen as a direct consequence of China's 2018 import restrictions on various commodities, including plastics. According to a report by ACC, between 2016 and 2017, the export purchase volume of film has fallen by 46%, resulting in a 24% reduction in the total post-consumer film recycling.

But this situation is not without a silver lining, Quinn said. She said that in the past six years, the domestic market has been steadily rising because they have less competition with small factories in developing countries, “where they don’t have to worry about environmental rights and labor quality,” she said. Quinn expects this to happen. The trend continues.

"With operations in Canada and Pennsylvania, the type of business we are doing is truly unparalleled compared to what might happen after exporting," she said.

Looking ahead, Quinn hopes that California’s SB 270 bill requires that the post-consumer recycling (PCR) content in reusable plastic retail bags be at least 40%, which will help ensure the end market. Similarly, New Jersey (A4676) is considering legislation to require the establishment of an end market for recycled content in trash bags. Quinn thinks this is an area that is particularly easy to achieve because they are “not something we will cancel soon.” According to the bill, garbage bags sold in the state must contain at least 10% post-consumer recycled content, but this This situation is not common.

"We should not use 100% virgin materials to make garbage bags," she said. "When there is recyclable content and it proves that we can do it, it doesn't make any sense...Of course, we can reach 100%, but why don't we even do 10%?"

Although the domestic processing capacity of the United States has been growing, Dell still believes that this is far from enough. In California alone, a survey of nearby facilities found that films produced in the state had less than 4% recycling capacity.

In this case, programs like Novolex’s often touted Bag-2-Bag program, which processes 22 million pounds of post-consumer film from store recycling bins at its recycling center in North Vernon, Indiana, each year, just The remaining small part of 8 billion pounds (conservative estimate, some people say) needs to be processed every year.

In a statement, Novolex stated that demand for recycled content products is “still high” and that “several states require post-consumer content levels in bags, and we expect this demand to continue in the next few years.”

In many ways, the debate surrounding film recycling mimics the debate in the broader plastic category. For all the work and investment required to collect materials, sort them, and develop suitable end markets for sales, some people worry that the current recycling process is not designed for longevity.

Bruce Weert, a professor of packaging science and engineering at the University of Florida, said: “[material] will be degraded, degraded, and degraded every time it passes.” “We are tolerating bad properties and trying to find the limits of our tolerance... .. What have we made with these things."

In Quinn's view, "Although this is of course a problem we should consider for the future, this is not a problem today." She said that as long as there is an end market, the degradation of the film will not disrupt the transaction. "This will be an exciting day. When there are too many recyclable materials to make a new product, it will eventually enter the recycling bin, so that it has actually affected the quality. We are too far away from that."

But Welt believes that the shortcomings of mechanical recycling require immediate attention, especially considering that it requires laborious screening of contaminants, which is a "critical task" in today's market.

"If you don't purify every river, then the whole thing will fall apart. But frankly, no matter how much we invest in this area, we are still not very good at it and will never be so," he said, alluding to more and more New packaging types that are not widely accepted are frequently used in roadside programs or retail recycling bins.

Welt said a better approach might be to abandon the sorting process not only for movies, but also for all waste streams.

He and his team at the University of Florida advocated a process called plasma assisted gasification. This is a more advanced form of gasification-a well-known process in the chemical industry-traditionally used to convert any carbon-based material (most commonly coal) into synthesis gas, which has approximately one-sixth the energy of natural gas one. Welt's team is working to go one step further by converting syngas output into methanol, a basic and easily transportable main raw material used to make "almost everything".

ACC has also expressed interest in chemical recycling; not as a substitute for mechanical recycling, but as a substitute for more difficult materials, such as mixed plastic containers and films.

"It can really shoot more kinds of film," Cookson said, "and deal with pollution in many ways: your pouches, your snack packaging, your frozen peas bags, and so on."

But according to Marco Castaldi, a professor at the City University of New York and director of the Geoengineering Center, the debate about gasification has a long history. He believes that the issue of plasma-assisted gasification is more complicated.

First, compared with other forms of chemical recovery, plasma requires higher energy consumption to generate syngas. But even so, Castaldi said, "Making syngas, that is the easy part. The difficult part is extracting the syngas and making methanol."

Although he said that these equations look simple on paper, he actually pointed out that the system is unpredictable and the efficiency is sometimes as low as 50%.

Castaldi said that he prefers less energy-intensive methods-such as combustion, conventional gasification or pyrolysis-rather than plasma-assisted gasification, but "I will accept any of these methods instead of doing nothing. "

He said: "I will accept those who try to force more recycling because [many of these materials] cannot be recycled mechanically." "Before we enter the market to absorb recycled materials, let us keep it out of the landfill."

At the same time, as far as movies are concerned, critics worry that the existence of separate channels will only further confuse the already confusing system.

Many companies may wish to achieve sustainability goals involving recyclability, so they have applied universal recycling marks on their film products. The symbol is accompanied by the words "Store drop-off." As part of How2Recycle, How2Recycle is a labeling system led by the Sustainable Packaging Alliance, which has been criticized for making certain products look recyclable, even though most consumers The options are limited.

Due to the high volume of complaints, the WRAP website stated that its “catalog has nothing to do with the How2Recycle label, Amazon or other brands” and told consumers to “send specific questions about the How2Recycle label directly to Info@GreenBlue.org or contact specific brands and companies Regarding their products and packaging." The organizers of the How2Recycle program did not respond to requests for comment.

Consumers’ confusion about film recycling can be seen in the persistently high pollution rate in roadside recycling bins across the country.

In California, by weight, film products account for 12% of pollution in the plastic category. In the summer of 2018, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts conducted an audit of 1,165 trolleys, 52% of which contained contamination from plastic bags, films, and packaging materials. According to Michael Orr, the city’s recycling director, this number has dropped significantly after the state’s “rights to recycling” education campaign, but it’s not clear where the movie will end.

In response to these concerns, the California Recycling Market Commission and the Roadside Recycling Commission recently recommended removing recycling labels from plastic film products and replacing them with language instructing consumers to dispose of them as garbage.

Committee member Dell said: "Our suggestion is that we just need to bluntly call these things what they are, this is garbage." "Because people put them in the recycling bin, and they are not recyclable."

Nearly a year after the pandemic, film recycling programs have reappeared in some retail locations. After initial concerns about the spread of the virus, the discussion of plastic films has taken on a new dimension-which turned out to be unfounded.

"Before, there was a lot of cultural momentum against disposable plastic bags," Weert said. He believes that the pandemic has forced many people to consider the advantages of using lightweight single-use plastics, especially because it involves personal protective equipment and the sustainability goal of encouraging lighter materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Film is the lightest category in plastic recycling, and is involved in these competing public health and sustainability agendas.

"We talk about'reduce, reuse, recycle'," Weert said. "Reduction is the only thing that proves to be beneficial. Movies are the product of reduction... but where do you start?"

Even if film manufacturers and recyclers perfect their collection methods in the short term, Keene of the Flexible Packaging Association stated that it will not solve the imminent challenges that the end market does not seem to be able to keep up with.

"You can have all the infrastructure in the world," she said. "But if you want to make a large-scale, limited-time purchase and no one will buy it, then it will still be sent to the landfill."

Correction: A previous version of this article misreported participants who participated in the California survey of available recycling bins and the number of retail bags collected for recycling.

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