Plastic bottles: the stalled dream of recycling and reuse
Half as many bottles are set to be used in Europe by 2030, and all single-use packaging and plastics should be gone by 2040. But the targets that the food giants have set themselves are constantly being pushed back.
434,240 tonnes. This is the weight of waste from plastic bottles alone. They account for 36% of the plastic domestic packaging thrown away each year by the French.
Bottles are the most commonly found rubbish on Europe’s beaches. Harmful to ecosystems when they break down into microplastics, they are among the packaging targeted by ongoing international talks to combat plastic pollution. These negotiations, initiated in March by the UN, should lead to a treaty by 2024.
Bottles are also the subject of the 2019 EU directive on single-use plastics. Incorporated into French legislation the following year by a law on waste prevention and the circular economy (Agec), this European text aims to eliminate single-use packaging by 2040.
The EU directive also mandates a cut in the use of virgin plastic resins. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is set to incorporate 25% recycled (rPET) resin by 2025, while all types of plastic will have to be 30% recycled by 2030. The number of bottles is also to be halved by 2030.
Targets postponed
To assess the recycling ambitions of food giants, the European Data Journalism Network analysed data from the “sustainability reports” of 24 companies based in Europe.
These companies have made a total of 98 commitments over the past two decades. Most of them set their targets to 2025. Of the 37 pledges that should have already been delivered on, 68% failed or were never even reported on again, being either postponed or abandoned.
Of the French companies surveyed by EDJNet, Danone provided the most pledges. The food giant, which had a turnover of €24.3 billion in 2021 – 16% of which was generated by its bottled-water division – set out in 2008 its ambitions for incorporating recycled plastic in its bottles. This mainly took the form of technical objectives, i.e. to manufacture bottles that are half made of recycled plastic.
More comprehensive targets were set in 2009, when the company’s water division reported an average rate of 8% recycled plastic use, with “the ambition to reach 20-30% in 2011 and 50% in the long term”.
But in 2013, the company was still reporting an average of only 9% recycled plastic in its bottles. In the meantime, the year 2020 became the new deadline for 25% recycled-plastic use worldwide. The Turkish and Chinese markets were to be excluded because they do not allow the use of recycled resin.
This last objective was set in stone. So much so that Youssef Chtourou, Danone’s director of the circular economy for packaging, who joined the company in 2018, assures us that this was “the first quantified commitment” made by the company as part of its packaging policy in 2016.
In 2020, a rate of incorporation of 25.5% was indeed reached for markets that allow the use of recycled plastic (and 19.8% for all countries combined). This rose to 27.4% in 2021 (20.6% for all countries).
To meet its next targets, the multinational is counting on the expansion of collection and recycling infrastructure in Europe. It intends to package all of its products with recycled plastic in the European market by 2025, and half worldwide.
On average, in 2019, mineral-water producers incorporated 20% recycled plastic in their bottles, says Marie-Ange Badin of the industry body Maison des Eaux Minérales Naturelles. The legal target set for 2025 does not therefore appear to be that high, even if this average may hide disparities between companies.
The higher price of recycled plastic
In the industry’s narrative, availability and cost are key. “Between December 2021 and June 2022, the price of a tonne of food-grade recycled plastic (rPET) rose from €1,784 to €2,370, a 32% increase,” reckons Marie-Ange Badin.
At the same time, the price differential with virgin plastic increased from 18% (in favour of virgin plastic) in December 2021, to 41% in June 2022. As a result, “some of our members, especially small and medium-sized companies, may reduce their incorporation targets, which might otherwise h