Is Recycling Working?

Recently, I saw @Carla Tanaka Dupuis of @reciki solusi Indonesia, one of Indonesia’s leading privately-owned waste management companies, at the Sustainability in Packaging Asia conference. She shared exciting news that Reciki is expanding its recycling operation in Indonesia. A month early, I visited @veolia/@suez’s newest recycling center in Thailand. It’s great to see they are building the state of art facility in Southeast Asia to improve recycling.

Is plastic recycling working? If it's working, why is the recycling rate still low? If not, why are many people investing into it?

Global Recycling Rates

In the US, if we look into the detail of the @EPA’s Advancing Sustainable Materials Management report, which is being referenced by many articles questioning recycling, the tonnage of plastic waste being recycled has increased by eight-fold from 1990 to 2017. In the same period of time, paper recycling has only increased by two-fold. The tonnage of aluminum recycling even decreased by nearly 40%.

Globally, plastic recycling increased even more. For example, China, based on OECD data, has increased its plastic recycling from 36,000 tonnes in 1990 to 13.2 million tonnes in 2019. That is a jaw-dropping 368x increase!

Solutions for Outpacing Consumption

The amount of plastics being recycled has increased significantly, however the plastic recycling rate is still low. One of the reasons is that the significant growth of recycling tonnage is out paced by the rapid growth and consumption of plastic products. Indeed, plastic is the most essential material in the modern society. From lightweighting for electric vehicles and wind turbines, to food preservation and health and hygiene, plastic is the material of choice in most of the cases.

How can we help the plastic recycling industry catch up with the consumption? One of the first steps is to make more plastic packaging readily recyclable, as I discussed in my recent @Sustainable Brands article. By growing the market for mono-materials — products composed of a single type of material — we can deliver packaging solutions that are fully recyclable from the moment they are put in the recycling bin.

We also need to improve waste collection infrastructure, particularly in developing countries. The system hasn’t changed much over the past 50 years, while plastic packaging has evolved significantly. The waste value chain in developing countries is long and fragmented, which leads to inefficiency, lack of transparency, low traceability and eventually lost value. Digitization is an innovative way to bring waste generators, informal pickers, layers of aggregators, and recyclers together.  In India, Dow partnered with an India homegrown waste management startup called @Recykal to launch the first digital waste management program in Pune. Through our collaboration, we have recycled more than xxx tonnes of plastic waste.

Through the collaboration between resin producers and recyclers, we start to see that the value of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic is being unlocked. Dow has developed an innovative new resin made with up to 70% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic called REVOLOOP™. REVOLOOP™ offers almost identical performance compared to virgin polymers. The improved performance of recycled plastics has created a new demand for PCR products.

(Can you tell which film is made from plastic waste?)

Investing for a Circular Economy

The improvement of plastic waste management and recycling start to attract large investment. @Circulate Capital established the world’s first investment fund dedicated to improving plastic recycling and preventing ocean plastic. In 2021 alone, Circulate Capital invested $17 million in six new portfolio companies in South and Southeast Asia and created an additional 54,300 tonnes of value-added recycled plastic. Recently, Recykal has raised $22 million from Morgan Stanley India and several other investors to further strengthen its technology, expand its capacity, and build hyper-local waste processing infrastructure. Dow also directly invested in recycler, Mr. Green Africa, to address waste management gaps and accelerate a circular economy for plastics in Africa.

With new technologies, improved waste management infrastructure, strong demand for PCR, and investment, recycling will have a promising future.