Plastics : Extended Producer Responsibility in the plastic industry (EPR)

Extended Producer Responsibility in the plastic industry:

• Requires manufacturers to take financial and operational responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their plastic packaging and products. 
• Companies can no longer simply produce plastic items, sell them, and forget about what happens afterward.
• Companies must help fund and organize the collection, sorting, recycling, and proper disposal of their plastic materials once consumers are done with them. 
• The goal is to shift the burden of plastic waste management away from taxpayers and governments back to the companies.

What does that mean in practice:

• It often involves paying fees into collective systems that fund recycling infrastructure.
• Designing products that are easier to recycle.
• Meeting specific targets for how much of their plastic waste can get properly recycled/managed.

The plastic industry faces unique and complex challenges:

• Implementing EPR that goes far beyond what other sectors experience. 
• Glass or aluminium can be recycled repeatedly without quality loss.
• Plastics degrade in quality each time they are processed,
• The variety of plastic types requires different recycling technologies and infrastructure.
• It makes it expensive and complicated to create collection systems for all the varieties of plastic. 
• Contamination in the form of food residue, adhesives and mixed materials can make some plastics difficult to recycle or unrecyclable. 
• Flexible packaging such as chip bags or multilayer films, have no recycling pathway, forcing companies to pay for the disposal of these items. 

The global nature of plastic supply chains:

• Creates complexity, as a single product might involve raw material suppliers in one country, manufacturing in another, and consumption in different markets with different EPR requirements.
• Many major plastic manufacturers and consumer goods companies argued that the costs would be enormous and would ultimately be passed on to consumers through higher prices. 
• As EPR laws are becoming more inevitable, companies have shifted toward compliance and strategic adaptation. 
• Some big companies have invested heavily in chemical recycling technologies that can break down plastics into their molecular components for reuse.
• Other companies have redesigned packaging to use fewer materials or switch to more recyclable plastic types. 

Greenwashing:

Critics argue that many companies are engaging in greenwashing, which means making superficial changes while continuing to produce vast quantities of unrecyclable plastic packaging. 

Greenwashing is when companies falsely market themselves or their products as environmentally friendly to appear more sustainable than they actually are.

Common examples:

• Vague terms like "eco-friendly" or "natural" without proof
• Highlighting one small green feature while hiding larger environmental harm
• Misleading green imagery/packaging on harmful products

The industry has also pushed for "advanced recycling" technologies as a solution.

Advanced recycling (chemical recycling):

Breaks down plastic waste into its basic chemical components, which can then be used to create new plastics or other products.

Key difference from traditional recycling:

• Traditional recycling: melts and reshapes plastic (physical process)
• Advanced recycling: breaks plastic into molecules/chemicals (chemical process)