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Packaging is the biggest single cause of unrecoverable waste in the European Union.
No. Unrecovered packaging currently accounts for no more than 3% of all the waste that goes into final disposal.
The only use of packaging is to promote and help to sell the product it contains.
No. The primary use of packaging is to protect products and deliver all types of goods intact. As for secondary and tertiary packaging, such as shrink wrap, pallets and crates, this serves an essential purpose in facilitating the transport of greater quantities of products at once, which makes the transport process more economic, keeping costs down for the consumer.
Recycling is always the most eco-friendly packaging waste management option.
Recent research suggests that although recycling is often better than the most common means of disposal, landfill, other waste management options such as incineration with energy recovery, composting or bio-degradation may make more sense in some situations.
One reason for this is the value of energy generated by incineration, which is often linked up to national grids or to heating systems. Another is that recycling uses large amounts of energy and creates pollution, especially when waste products are transported to recycling mills. Moreover, individual recyclers may make numerous trips from their homes or businesses to local recycling bins using motor cars.
It is interesting to consider why recycling has for some time been perceived as one of the best waste management options. This may be because of the effectiveness of green campaigns. It is also possibly due to the lack of sufficiently sophisticated research until now. According to David Pearce, who advised the UK government on environment policy in the 1980s and early 1990s, "the EU's waste hierarchy [as outlined in the 1994 Packaging and Packaging Directive] was never based on any analysis, but was more an article of faith." Growing understanding of this point is leading participants on all sides of the debate to reassess the validity of waste hierarchies, and to take a fresh look at all waste management options.
The best way to reduce packaging waste is through the application of a waste hierarchy.
Practical experience has demonstrated that the best way to select the most environmentally effective and economically efficient solutions in a particular area is to make waste recovery choices locally. Because conditions vary so much from region to region in Europe, it does not make sound environmental or economic sense to prescribe the means by which packaging waste should be managed. In addition, imposing a "straight jacket" by adopting a rigid waste hierarchy would stifle innovation, without which improvements to products and technologies (including waste management) would not happen.
Landfill is always the least eco-friendly waste management option.
It is certainly a commonly held belief that landfill is the worst option, but recent scientific thinking has called this into question as a view that holds good in all circumstances. In some cases, landfill is a useful option. For example, landfill can be used to fill up holes in the ground, such as those caused by quarrying or disused mines. It can also be used for reclaiming land. It is often a question of what the land is filled with and how it is then managed. Landfill has been used successfully for the creation of golf courses and other public recreational spaces, for instance.
Plastic is always the worst packaging material from an environmental point of view.
No. Plastic packaging offers huge advantages to the environment and to consumers as well – light-weighting, extended shelf life, fresh delivery and fresh goods out of season, and reduction of the overall amount of waste arising from packaging. Moreover, following use, the energy component of plastic packaging can be recovered through incineration, placed in landfill, or recycled into granules that can be used to make other plastic packaging. Increasingly, new techniques are being used to recover plastics from the waste stream for use as feedstock for other products.
It is in the economic interests of packaging producers to oppose recycling and reuse, just as it is in the interests of manufacturers that their products should have a limited life, so that they are bought more often by people.
The decision about packaging choice is not made by packaging producers. It is made by the manufacturers who specify the packaging for their product. Every company will only buy as much packaging as they need to do the job of packaging their product. Every company has to base its commercial decisions on economic, social and political reality, and what the market wants. Companies will make choices about packaging based on what they believe consumers want, and if they make the wrong choices, they very quickly find out.
One good example is in the province of Ontario in Canada, where the government badgered the soft drinks industry to put some of their drinks on the supermarket shelves into refillable packaging, alongside recyclable plastic such as PET.
They also persuaded them to put $3 million into a promotional campaign to encourage consumers to buy the reusable packaging. Consumers preferred to carry on buying PET and cans. They had recycling schemes in place and preferred to put them in the recycling bins than to carry the heavier refillable bottles home and then have to carry them back to the supermarket.
Producers of packaging will always respond to market demand be it for reusable packaging or other kinds. The PET industry is now making refillable PET, and they get a much higher price for this than they get for the one-way container.
This article reproduced by kind permission of
EUROPEN - The European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment
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