Being Green is getting easier

On the 17th October 2009 the Irish Times published an article by Ita O’Kelly, “It’s not easy being green”. An interesting article, but a little ill informed. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/1017/1224256876843.html)


Ita first questions us what ever happened to bringing bottles back to the shop. There are very simple issues as to why we cannot simply return our bottles and jar’s . From my recollection it was only the drink’s companies which in the past operated the return’s policy. Now a days we have such a wide range of products all in their own packaging that returning them to the shop would be a logistical nightmare especially since so few of these products are now made in Ireland. What we have now is that glass is collected in bottle banks, where it can be safely handled, centrally collected and compacted to minimise shipping costs (and hence fuel consumption and CO2 production.)

Ita reminisces when “butter came in foil paper, water came out of the tap, the butcher wrapped meat in paper and courgettes did not come in a plastic three-pack. Today everything is prewrapped and prepackaged, and unless you can afford to shop at a farmer’s market, there is little choice about any of this.”

*Ita you can still get this if you want it, butter still comes in foil paper (you don’t have to buy margarine), water surprising still comes out of our taps, you might even be able to drink it in some parts of the country. If you go to your local butcher you can get your meat wrapped in simple plastic packaging and most supermarkets or even better farmers market will sell individual vegetables. But most people don’t want this, they want convenience and lowest costs, which means the meat is packed in factories and need to last sufficiently long on the shelf to be sold and we want our favourite vegetables at anytime of the year regardless of wither they are in season here or where they are grown.

I’m disappointed that Ita seems to have done little research into the recycle market to understand how it is working in practice. Ita questions what’s so eco-friendly about transporting our rubbish halfway around the world to China or Asia for recycling? The real question she should ask is why this is happening.

The recycling industry works like any other, they sell product (eg. bales of collected waste) to whoever is willing to pay the most for it. For the last few years this has been the Chinese. What’s more the cost of shipping to china is relatively low. With so many products being shipped from China to Europe there are a lot of empty containers going back. The CO2 is being burned anyway shipping these empty containers are we not better off putting something in them to abate the insatiable demand from China for plastic? Believe me I’d prefer for the recycle not to be going to China. I’ve 10 yrs experience of having working with companies trying to source and buy recycled plastic, we’d love it, but the costs are crippling and sometimes make it uneconomical.

To interfere with this market is likely to require significant legal changes to our existing legislation with the government taking more responsibility for the collection programmes in the country. This would potentially face legal action from the major waste management companies who’s business it would impact.

The Waste Packaging Directive places obligations on companies to pay for the recovery and recycling of packaging they produce, use or import. Hence most companies try to keep packaging to a minimum. What they don’t want is products being damaged. How would you feel if your Easter Egg was cracked because someone dropped it when getting it to the shelf. Or do you want your bottle of bleach to burst if it gets dropped on the floor of your kitchen? This is part of the reason why so many drinks have moved to plastic packaging from heavier glass bottles, significantly less wasted products and more of the transported waste is product.

The breweries have spent years looking at moving to plastic packaging for beers. There have been problems not just with the permeation of gases to and from the beer spoiling the taste to problems with the recyclability of the bottles.

It is only in recent years that Erema a plastic recycling machine manufacturer have developed the technology which allows HDPE to be recycled back to a material which is suitable for use back into milk bottles. (The cost of getting material of this quality however is very high)

Ita concludes “there is no real virtue in recycling items that can be reused like glass and no merit in recycling unnecessary packaging that is ultimately shipped abroad. The onus is on the producer and retailer to deliver a 21st century solution.”

I agree the onus is on the producers and retailers to deliver a new solution, however to remove the need for recycling:

- people would need to stop being swayed by design of packaging

- Standard bottles and jars adopted world wide

- sufficient production capacity and product range in Ireland to use up the returned glass containers (e.g how would we reuse wine bottles?)

Currently recycling of plastic packaging, paper, glass and metal have progressed well and our recycling and recovery rates show this. There is a gap, film is a recycling nightmare. The introduction of renewable, compostable films is only making this harder. The materials used, HDPE, LDPE, PVC, EVOH, PET etc are not all easily recyclable together, and can only currently used for low value products of limited market size. In Ireland with it’s high cost of manufacturing these products are at almost uneconomical, if the recycled film waste has to be paid for.

Ireland is developing a multifaceted approach to dealing with it’s waste problem to cope with how we want to live today. It still has work to do, renewable and degradable films might hold the key, but will it be possible to get the vapour and gas barrier properties required to stop foods spoiling. Alternatively we could go back to the daily shop or get bigger freezers.