Image inspiration (Frida Kahlo) - link
WHO ARE WE KIDDING?
In Britain and Europe we're spending enormous political, industrial and consumer effort trying to squeeze another few percentage points out of plastics recycling: EPR fees, Simpler Recycling, improved collections, packaging redesign, recycled content requirements, sorting technology, consumer campaigns and potentially chemical recycling.
Meanwhile, globally, petrochemical companies are commissioning millions upon millions of tonnes of new virgin polymer capacity.
Perhaps the uncomfortable question for the waste industry is simply; are we too hung up on plastic? We collect it, sort it, bale it and talk endlessly about improving its recyclability, but how much influence do we have over the material? We don't design it, manufacture it or determine how much virgin polymer enters the market and frankly, we're not particularly good at recycling much of it either.
Increasingly, the clever technology - polymer design, advanced reprocessing, depolymerisation, pyrolysis and petrochemical conversion all belong to industries upstream of ours.
Perhaps the waste industry needs to ask whether it should continue trying to solve a problem largely created and controlled elsewhere or concentrate more of its attention on the things it can influence and already does well and stop judging its entire performance through the prism of plastic.
Give us aluminium and we'll recover it. Give us steel and we'll separate it. Give us cardboard and we'll turn it back into fibre. Give us properly segregated container glass and we'll return it to the furnace.
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