While recycling plastics is a huge challenge, reducing the use of plastics and reusing plastics are also essential to make plastic a “circular” material.
The use of plastic is widespread throughout the world, for all types of uses. Depending on the country, it is the intensity of use that will vary. The European and French directives aim to move away from the notion of a single-use product for plastic, to limit uses, and to promote the development of an economy of recycling and reuse of plastic.
Across the world, these are nearlya million bottles that are sold every minute. As we know today, the very use of these bottles today poses emerging but worrying health issues. Beyond that, the presence of this material in the composition of a large quantity of products, due to its properties of resistance and impermeability, of lightness, today poses the problem of the management of the generated waste. Plastic degrades very slowly, which is also a property that explains its massive use. That said, the pollution it generates, in the form of microplastics in the oceans, in the rivers, constitutes a serious ecological threat. Weakly biodegradable and sometimes toxic, they are however totally irreplaceable today for many uses.
The 3Rs: reduce, recycle, reuse
Finally, regulations have sometimes pushed certain countries to export their plastic waste abroad, in order to comply with the standards to which they have committed, encouraging the emergence of giant landfills, in Indonesia or India, for example.
It is therefore urgent to act on the volumes of plastic materials produced. Which leaves you wondering, when you know that the consumption of plastics has increased tenfold in the last ten years. In limiting the uses unique plastic materials, and certain uses, Europe and France want to limit the increase in production over the years to come. Also, better controlling the quantity of plastic materials put on the market makes it possible to imagine more serenely the integration of plastic in a circular economy.
The volume aspect induces that of collection. Today in France, only 60% of plastic bottles are collected by collectors. This shortfall is a gap for plastics processors and regenerators that absolutely needs to be filled in order to secure the supply of plastic raw materials. It is for this reason that France has committed, by 2025, to achieve 100% recycled plastics.
While research laboratories are developing innovative solutions to recycle and recover many types of plastics, certain plastics cannot currently enter the recycling chain. If technical solutions emerge to recycle this or that plastic, the problem is likely to last for others.
But the heart of the matter is not there today. A plastic like PET is 100% recyclable, it is found in bottles, packaging. However, the overall plastic type recycling rate in France is slightly above 25%, for an overall rate, for all plastics, of 21.3% in France. Improving the performance of the recycling industry should allow it to become a real supplier of raw materials, beyond the obligations put in place. But to get there, we will need stability in terms of volumes, upstream and downstream of the chain, as we have seen.
Finally, reuse. The development of a plastic reuse industry should make it possible to create new sectors and limit the need for plastic through the development of uses.
The harmonious and coordinated development of the reduction of the need for plastic materials, recycling and reuse is a prerequisite for developing a circular plastic economy in the proper sense.