Are We Polluters?
As of March 2018, the European Union stated that it will require an 80% reduction of plastic bags by 2019. This means virtually every European country is now considering ways to bring about a significant reduction in the use of single use plastic bags, containers, and other items such as drinking straws. Well here we are in 2019 and still producing and discarding One Trillion, that is 1.000 Billion single use plastic bags each year. How many of those trillion disposable bags are the result of our industry continuing to sell our product packaged in single use plastic bags?
EU’s proposal to ban certain single-use plastic items by 2019 has been delayed until 2021, but the time will come and come very soon when we must find a solution to provide our product to our customer without contributing to this serious issue of plastic debris pollution.
This spring, May 2019, individual member states are expected to vote on legislation and begin devising just how this ambitious initiative will unfold.
The European Commission came forward with a strategy to target the 10 single-use plastic products which are most often found on Europe’s beaches and in our seas—things like plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws and drink stirrers. The idea is to ban these completely, but also to have consumption reduction target for other single use plastic products (think our plastic packaging). There will also be legislated obligations for plastic product producers (think our packaging suppliers), who will have to cover the costs of waste management and plastic debris clean-up. That will affect us indirectly by causing the cost of our packaging materials to cost more. There will be other measures to raise awareness among the public of recycling requirements. This public awareness can also have a negative effect on our businesses by exposing our producers to the public shaming of those who ignore this groundswell trend. Our ice producers and customers cannot afford this negative public opinion directed at non-conformists to measures designed to limit plastic debris.
The next step for the EU is to take these measures through the legislative process, and it just might get adopted just after the European Parliament elections in May 2019.
When the world and EU in particular first started charging for single use plastic bags at grocery stores, in some areas banning plastic bags completely, and regulating the use of other single use plastic items, there was a moment of resistance. That customer resistance has melted away quickly, just as our product will without an appropriate packaging solution.
The EU has the world’s largest maritime territory; 23 out of our 28 member states have a coastline; and our maritime regions are home to almost half our population and count for about half of our GDP. So it goes without saying that oceans are very important to Europeans. There’s a general recognition amongst our EU member states that ocean pollution from plastic is a very serious problem. We must do something and that something is the kind of measures that are being actively discussed to stop the problem from getting a lot worse.
The emotional vision is for every piece of post-use plastics to be recycled or remade into raw materials for new products—including, new plastics. Innovative technologies and programs promise to make this possible. Some of these include:
- Chemical recycling (or depolymerization), which converts used plastics back into the building blocks (i.e., monomers) of new plastic raw materials;
- Recycling programs for wraps, bags and other flexible packaging for future reuse of the basic compounds that decompose so slowly in nature;
- Compatibilizers, which can boost the compatibility and performance properties of mixed recycled resins;
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- Programs that allow residents to bag non-recycled plastics and place them in their recycling carts to be processed into fuels or manufacturing feedstocks.
The quest for a more circular approach to managing our plastics resources is real, and it’s happening right now. Our industry depends upon plastic packaging today. We will be affected by whatever the resulting solutions end up being.
There are arguments supporting the environmental value of using plastic rather than other packaging, but those arguments are being lost in the emotional crusade to restrict the use of single use plastic products. Sure there are facts that show plastic bags are better for the environment, and alternatives cause more environmental damage. Plastic bags are 100% recyclable, reusable and durable! Banning plastic bags will cause more harm to the environment. Plastic bag production uses less water and produces less carbon than paper or cotton/canvas.
That is all supported by science and monetary statistics, but it is a losing argument to the emotional picture of a dead bird or fish with its belly full of single use plastic refuse.
Bangladesh was the first country to ban plastic bags in 2002. China, Israel, South Africa, the Netherlands, Morocco, Kenya, Rwanda, Mauritania, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Albania and Georgia have since implemented similar bans. As of 1 February 2019, such bans have been introduced in 55 countries, with varying degrees of enforcement, and 31 additional countries have taken a weaker approach and have imposed a charge per bag. Bans and charges have also been enacted by some local jurisdictions such as territories, provinces, cities, and towns.
We as EPIA members must get in front of this groundswell of environmental emotion before we find ourselves and our businesses significantly impacted by legislation restricting how we are allowed to provide our product to our customers. Remember we produce “Ice You Can Trust”, and also must provide that trusted product in packaging you can trust not to pollute.
We must position ourselves to not be associated with this problem and in fact we must get in front of this and find alternate options for packaging and delivery options for our customers to provide ice to their customers. We have an opportunity to benefit by working with our packaging supplier members and show that the EPIA has the “public good” attitude when it comes to preserving our environment. This will not be solved easily or quickly, but will have to be solved in order to maintain the public goodwill for our product packaging.
During the Wroclaw convention in 2017, we discussed this briefly, but have not devoted the effort to get prepared for the inevitable outcome that can have dire effects to our way of doing business. Now is the time to explore our options. We as the EPIA promote ourselves as the leaders in the packaged ice industry. We as those leaders must lead our industry during this significant change in how we conduct business in the near future.