It’s Time to Ditch Performative Recycling

Source: It’s Time to Ditch Performative Recycling

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The researchers call for a better recycling system that starts with deposit return schemes (DRS), which is what the industry has been fighting so hard in the first place. However, DRS leads to cleaner bottles.https://8c10ad388a943cb58f0a5a24e49b70ec.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“The use of DRS is a step in the right direction but requires investment and consideration of where reverse vending machines should be placed. Forward-thinking and collaborative initiatives are required for making it easy for consumers, in the household and on the go, to give away, or drop into different collection points (perhaps small shops), their PET bottle waste for a deposit, rather than disposing of it to street bins.”²

The researchers conclude that if we are going to make new bottles out of recycled PET, we have to do a much better job of it with:

• design-for-recycling that avoids contamination from printing inks and adhesives on the labels;
• controlled storage conditions that account for time, UV exposure, and temperature, all of which might permit more leaching;
• improved collection, sorting, reprocessing, and super-cleaning, which involves “three typical processing steps: high-temperature treatment; vacuum or inert gas treatment; and surface treatment with non-hazardous chemicals”;
• revisiting regulations and chemical risk assessment

They conclude that the goal must be “a functional economy where wasted resources find their way back into the system with the least trade-offs, especially those relevant to health and safety.”³

None of this sounds cheap. And the industry is likely to challenge it: The whole point of using RPET is political, as is their drive for chemical recycling, as the industry tries to hijack the circular economy. They want us to keep buying disposables and this all makes us and governments feel good about them. But nobody is going to buy them if they are not sure they are safe.

Study author Eleni Iacovidou of Brunel University said the best thing we can do is simply use less of the stuff.

“We all have a responsibility to bear. We need to start thinking about how to prevent the use of PET bottles in our households by investing, for example, in water filters, or large water containers and learning how to dispose of our plastic waste properly,” said Iacovidou in a press release. “If we reduce our consumption of PET then we will drive change further up the system. Less demand equals less production in the first place.”³