Interview with Jenny Wassenaar, Trivium Chief Sustainability Officer, about Plastic Packaging Waste

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As we should always all know by now, plastic recycling is a sham. That little recycle image (“chasing arrows”) on bottles? Invented by a consortium of plastic trade entrance teams to place the onus on the patron to repair the issue they’re creating. Similar to the private carbon footprint was.

Plastic is a) fabricated from oil, b) exhausting/unimaginable to type correctly, c) environmentally dangerous to course of (you need to use a variety of power to soften it down and reform it into one thing new), d) typically fabricated from and contaminated by poisonous supplies, and e) not economical to recycle in additional than 90% of circumstances. And fewer than 10% of it really will get recycled.

It will probably additionally solely be recycled as soon as — the composition of plastic makes it such that if you soften it down, a plastic bag (or bottle or …) can’t be made into one other plastic bag (or bottle or …). It may be made right into a park bench. And on the finish of that park bench’s life, it goes to landfill.

Jenny Wassenaar, Chief Sustainability Officer at Trivium Packaging, a frontrunner in eco-friendly packaging supplies, sat down with CleanTechnica to debate the issue and a few options.

CT: Given the general public is waking as much as the non-recyclability of plastics and the well-funded greenwashing marketing campaign carried out by the plastics producers, what sort of public schooling can extra recyclable supplies producers do to offer folks an alternative choice to maintain up as a greater reply?

JW: Partnering with trade associations is one technique to coordinate a cohesive message a couple of explicit packaging materials. For instance, we collaborated with Metallic Packaging Europe within the growth of the Metallic Recycles Without end Brand. This emblem is designed to put on packages all around the world and has the target to speak to shoppers that the packages are recyclable. On this approach we intention to assist educate the general public about recyclable supplies. Banding collectively and mixing sources is way more practical than going at it on one’s personal. Nonetheless, it’s equally necessary to coach shoppers by way of their social media platforms, web sites, PR, and advertising and marketing actions in regards to the packaging they produce/make the most of to assist help within the schooling with fact-based knowledge. There are lots of fantastic teams who’re making a distinction of their communities and serving to to unfold the phrase to our youthful generations by way of colleges and cleanup tasks. One such group is Scrap College Youngsters, a corporation that writes kids’s books on recycling, does ocean cleanup dives, and works with colleges to coach youth of all ages as acceptable to their stage of schooling in regards to the truths and challenges of recycling and the way they will make a distinction. One other group, Creando Conciencia, situated in Argentina, is an city recycling group that works to make sure recycling is going down of their communities, establishing the infrastructure the place wanted.

CT: Is there an trade group that may lead that cost?

JW: I don’t imagine one single trade group can lead this cost. It takes a village. Business associations equivalent to Metallic Packaging Europe, The Can Manufacturing Institute, The Canned Good Coalition, Alupro, Aerobal, and the Aluminum Institute are all working to assist educate and unfold the reality of the sustainable good thing about steel.

CT: Plastics have used all kinds of misleading campaigns, together with a pseudoscientific examine funded by the American Chemistry Council that not-so-shockingly discovered that reusable fabric purchasing baggage comprise micro organism when somebody drips meat juice on them and doesn’t launder them, and ways like circumventing plastic bag bans by lobbying for a loophole for “reusable bags” which might be merely thicker plastic, as they did when Hawaii grew to become the primary state within the US to have a complete single-use plastics ban. When the plastic trade has just about limitless monetary backing, how can we overcome the noise and get folks to grasp they’re being manipulated?

JW: Every of us must do our half, many voices are louder than one voice. We have to make conscious that recycling methods don’t all the time perform correctly, and what folks understand as being recyclable will not be being recycled. We want motion on each stage — from our governments to firms and companies, to recyclers and educators, and to shoppers, as a result of finally if shoppers usually are not collaborating by recycling, or pushing for firms to make the most of sustainable options, change will transfer slowly.

CT: Inform me about extra sustainable packaging choices and among the improvements and breakthroughs you’ve seen lately.

JW: In our trade, steel has continued to innovate, turning into lighter through the use of much less supplies and incorporating recycled supplies, providing all kinds of codecs, shapes, and sizes for segments the place a bundle could not have existed in steel earlier than. The can of at this time has all the identical nice preservation, safety, and recyclability because the can of our nice grandparents, however is vastly completely different in most each different approach due to innovation. We use much less power and use renewable sources of power to scale back our general environmental footprint.

CT: What would you say to a plastics lobbyist or PR individual whose job it’s to ensure the world is flooded with extra single-use plastics?

JW: Let’s outline a approach collectively to ensure all packaging supplies are as recyclable as steel so as to protect our planet’s sources for generations to return.