20 Feb 2020 --- The UK government must take an interventionist approach to packaging sustainability to prevent companies from pulling in different directions and creating more consumer confusion. This is the view of Green Alliance Senior Policy Advisor Libby Peake who will be speaking about the need to make holistic and strategic choices in packaging at Packaging Innovations 2020 in Birmingham, UK, next week. In this wide-ranging interview with PackagingInsights, Peake shares her insights on overcoming the plastic and microplastics pollution crisis, compostable packaging, chemical recycling and more.
What is your message to the Packaging Innovations 2020 attendees?
Peake: I’m hoping to bring some nuanced discussion about material choice and systems choices. How we deliver food is a really fertile area at the moment – there's loads of stuff going on and we want to make sure that it doesn't accidentally go in a way that is not as sustainable as it might be. We are urging people to think strategically and holistically about their packaging choices to ensure they are part of the system rather than working in the opposite direction.
The show’s ‘Big Plastics Debate’ is transitioning to the ‘Big Carbon Debate.’ What does this indicate to you about how perceptions of plastic are evolving?
Peake: Initially, we saw a lot of concern about plastic pollution as a standalone issue and the public is right to be outraged – it urgently needs solving. More recently, some including the Circular Economy Task Force, which convenes with Green Alliance, is highlighting that if we just address plastic and don't think about other impacts, we could be causing damage further down the line that we could avoid now if we took a better approach. We are concerned that the packaging system in countries like the UK isn’t working as well as it should be – we are not maintaining materials at their highest value and we are not keeping them in circulation. We are far too wasteful in too many ways. The system itself isn’t working and we are keen to point out that if you just remove plastic, you’re still going to wind up with environmental consequences that people will be right to be outraged about.
Green Alliance states in its recent ‘Plastic Promises’ report that in the absence of government direction, “a potentially counterproductive approach to solving plastic pollution is emerging.” What specific action would you like to see the UK government take?
Peake: Plastic pollution is on everyone’s agenda, as is the need to be seen doing things to make sure it’s not a problem anymore. In the absence of clear government direction, however, companies are sometimes not making decisions systematically. Some of the research’s anonymized interviewees admitted that packaging innovations can be seen as a real competitive advantage and that companies are not working as coherently as they might, not necessarily sharing intelligence and, in some instances, making choices that are conflicting and confusing the public.
We would like to see more strategic direction from the government to ensure we are all on the same page. For example, plant-based compostable packaging can offer improvements to the current system but only if they are introduced systematically and avoid damaging the conventional plastic lines or vice versa. There needs to be a systemic approach that keeps them separate. Without any clear guidance, assurances or regulations from the government about what can be placed on the market and where a confused picture is developing. This is especially true in the case of takeaways introducing PLA and other plant-based materials, thinking that it’s automatically going to better but without the infrastructure and public education, it's creating confusion that could be prevented if the government was more interventionist.
Will a reformed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) help to overcome these issues?
Peake: It’s really hard to say about the EPR. It’s a potential game-changer but we don't know yet how it's going to work or what sort of modulated fees the government are going to be using or how restrictive they will be about what can be placed on the market. Even before EPR, the government should be ensuring that only certified materials are entering the market.
You indicate in the report that public pressure is driving the plastics-out trend. Is it possible to achieve a circular economy for plastics without first addressing public perceptions of plastics, which have become so negative?
Peake: It can be challenging to discuss complicated environmental consequences with the public but we must get better at communicating how best to utilize packaging systems. Plastics, in some instances, might be an ideal container for reusable systems if they are light and don't include any toxic chemicals, so if people are opposed to plastics in general and that extends to the refillable systems that would be a real shame. It's desperately important we make sure that we are as clear as possible with the public and providing the most sustainable options.
We are seeing big investment in chemical recycling from the likes of BP. Is it a long-term solution to improve recycling?
Peake: We are a bit cautious – we are certainly not saying chemical recycling is the silver bullet like some people are suggesting. We are concerned with the increased energy use compared to conventional recycling. Also, if these types of technologies require more energy than virgin plastics then it doesn't make sense. We would only want it to be used where the energy requirements are lower, we do not want to increase fossil fuels just for the sake of recycling. Further, we are concerned that there might be some drive to make fossil fuels out of existing plastics and then say that it is recycling when we want the material kept as the material with all of its carbon remaining embedded. There also needs to be considerably more thought to conventional infrastructure to improve energy outcomes and ensure we do not push materials than could be mechanically recycled into other systems. This is another area where I don't think there has been enough government thought – the right residual waste infrastructure is in place but there has not been enough thought to recycling infrastructure.
How concerned is Green Alliance by the potential health implications of microplastics?
Peake: The environmental movement in general is concerned by microplastics and microbeads, the impact they are having on the marine environment and the impact they could have on the public. Organisms towards the bottom of the food chain are eating microplastics and it is reducing the number of calories available to organisms higher up the food chain. Microplastics are also getting on to our plates – I read that the average shellfish consumer in Europe eats tens of thousands of microplastics every year. It’s true that everyone always says that we haven't done enough research yet, and we can't determine exactly what the health implications are, but I would say they are probably not going to be positive. We should certainly adopt a precautionary stance.
To this end, we are quite concerned that the UK government ban on microbeads, which it said was world-leading, hardly touches upon the sources of microplastics or unintentional microbeads that get into the environment. Plus the government has only banned them from cosmetics when there are numerous other sources, the biggest of which is agriculture. Through the chemical regulation process in the EU, there is potentially going to be a much wider ban on intentionally-added microbeads and we would certainly like to see the UK follow this lead.
By Joshua Poole
