While all of that sounds promising for creating the circular economy that everyone wants as a solution to plastic waste, how do we get these discarded, single-use items—particularly water bottles—into a value stream that captures the benefits and value of plastic waste and creates greater usefulness?
Bottled water is big business While bottled water is in for consumers, plastic water bottles are out, according to numerous news reports that say consumers are becoming more concerned about the plethora of water bottles floating around in the ocean.
A 2017 survey of the European PET recycling industry, released on Dec. 19, 2018, shows that 58.2% of PET bottles were collected out of 3,308,300 tons of PET bottles placed on the European market in 2018.
Paying consumers to return their plastic water bottles to the store might work as an incentive to consumers.
Don’t make as much single-use plastic stuff like water bottles that end up as waste in the environment, they say.
Even if all plastic packaging is recyclable, humans must take the responsibility to get the recyclable plastic packaging into the proper waste stream to ensure that it is recycled.
“While PET recovery has seen an uptick in patent filings in 2016, it is clear there is no real trend in search queries, which may indicate an industry that is innovating at pace,” said PatSnap.
The European PET Recycling Survey 2017 noted that other problems also interfere with the recyclability of PET, including the quality of the material.
It’s one thing to say that “more collection and better sorting” will provide a solution to ridding the environment of plastic waste and putting more recyclate into the resin stream (rPET in particular), but getting the PET bottles and other single-use packaging waste into the recycling stream remains the most difficult part of achieving these goals.
However, that must be easy and convenient, which might mean moving toward alternatives to sorting and cleaning the collected plastic waste which is not very energy efficient or “green.” Recycling alternatives According to IHS Markit, “only about 4% of the plastic packaging used globally is ultimately delivered to recycling plants, while a third is left in various ecosystems, and 40% ends up in landfill.” The challenge, as noted above, involves humans and their handling of the single-use plastic bottles and other containers once the product has been consumed.