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This implies designing plastic packaging in order that it’s simpler to recycle. Plastics are made of huge molecules known as polymers, with completely different plastic varieties made up of various ones. The plastics mostly utilized in packaging are polyethylene (of assorted densities), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and, to a lesser extent, polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
The simplest to recycle are PET and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), that are used to make smooth drinks bottles or containers. What makes recycling troublesome is when completely different plastic varieties are used collectively, in addition to the sheer number of plastic in the marketplace, as differing kinds must be separated to be recycled. (Analysis into recycling completely different plastics collectively is underway, however nonetheless at an early stage.) So lowering the variety of plastic polymers used would make recycling a lot simpler and more economical.
“We’ve acquired hundreds of various polymer permutations,” says Thompson, even in single-use plastic packaging, which includes 40 p.c of all of the plastic made. “We may most likely do a lot of the heavy lifting for the entire single-use packaging with two or three completely different polymers,” he says.
Corporations at the moment are starting to reply to this problem. “That you must go to 1 tough polymer design whereas sustaining the performance,” says Marco ten Bruggencate, a business vice chairman for packaging and specialty plastics at Dow, one of many world’s greatest chemical corporations. That “performance” consists of preserving no matter product is within the container whereas sustaining its model attraction. Dow primarily produces polyethylene (PE) for packaging, a plastic which can be utilized to make containers for all kinds of merchandise, from shampoo bottles to meals packaging movie.
Producers know how one can make between 80 p.c and 90 p.c of all packaging recyclable, says Ten Bruggencate. However options nonetheless have to be discovered for the rest, similar to packaging for cheese and meat. The problem right here, Ten Bruggencate says, is creating packaging that retains meat recent, however which is created from one-polymer polyethylene moderately than a fancy construction of various polymers. “You want to have the ability to innovate to allow all these functionalities inside one polymer,” he says.
Different companies are boosting recyclability by utilizing extra clear plastic. Drinks bottles are product of easy-to-recycle PET, but when dye is added to them, the colours merge throughout recycling and produce a grey recyclate that’s onerous to then promote. “Recyclers inform me the clear PET bottle is value twice as a lot to them,” Thompson says. Coca-Cola is rolling out clear bottles in North America created from one hundred pc recycled PET. It’s already utilizing clear bottles in Asia and Europe.
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