IK INTERVIEW: THE INSIDER PERSPECTIVE ON PLASTIC PACKAGING In the context of the ongoing debate about plastics packaging and sustainability, Elisabeth Skoda discusses recycling and recyclate goals and challenges, bioplastics, consumer behaviour and much more with Dr Isabell Schmidt, the managing director at IK, the German plastic packaging industry association. Dr Isabell Schmidt
ES: The European strategy for plastics has set a target to use 10 million tonnes of recycled plastics in the EU by 2025. This includes all plastic, not just packaging. In this context, IK has set the target to use 1 million tonnes of recyclate in plastic packaging by 2025. How far along is IK in this goal?
IS: Yes, 1 million tonnes of recyclates by 2025 is an ambitious target, starting from 400,000 tonnes in 2017. This is pretty much in line with the European Commission’s goal to use 10 million tonnes of recyclates in plastic products so it comes to approximately 22 per cent of the production volume. This year we have monitored our progress and the amount of recycled materials used has increased by 75,000 tonnes. At the same time, the use of virgin plastic material has decreased by about 2% so that’s a remarkable reversal of trends. ES: What are the particular challenges when it comes to meeting IK’s 2025 targets, e.g. for the food industry and also non-food industries. What innovations have you observed to tackle these?
IS: Clearly, we still have to triple the amount of post-consumer recyclates. Large parts of the plastic packaging market are for sensitive goods: around 44% is food packaging but also cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, dangerous goods etc. For those goods we can only use raw materials of very high purity grades which makes it very challenging to use recyclates. One solution is to use barriers: silicon oxide can be used as a barrier so the food is not in direct contact with the recyclate. Otherwise, recyclate coming from PET beverage bottles can be used in direct contact with food.
As for the other markets where it’s easier to use recyclates, the main obstacles are still the supply of large enough quantities and also of consistent quality for processing. Very high quality recyclates are still scarce and converters have to deal with machines running slower as well as impaired aesthetics like lack of transparency. But we are seeing a lot of innovation in packaging design with regard to better recyclability and increased recycled content. For example, we have multilayer packaging that is designed in a way that allows for recycling of all layers all together. We see juice bottles using silicon oxide instead of polyamide as a barrier against oxygen. We see paint buckets and bottles for household cleaners with high content of recycled materials that remain attractive for end users. However, these innovations are not always successful on the market because they often cost more. Another barrier is on the customer side: there is still a certain lack of acceptance, for example because of the greyish colour of most recyclates compared to virgin. Last but not least, recyclates have to be come more competitive in relation to virgin plastics.
ES: So you haven’t observed a bigger uptake from consumers in view of the recent plastic debate? Do you think consumers often say they want one thing but actually what they buy is different?
IS: At the moment what sells best is the claim of less plastics and this is hampering recyclability because we are seeing an increase of paper based laminate. This is not recyclable but it is advertised with the claim that it uses up to 80% less plastics so that makes it more difficult to advertise packaging that uses recyclates. This is something that brand owners need Packaging Europe | 25 |
