Straws lodged in turtle’s nostrils and plastic bags clogging city streets - the world is oversaturated with waste plastic and the issue has reached fever pitch. Increasing the amount of recycled plastic in products could go some way towards reining in ever-higher volumes entering the environment.
Products made from recycled plastic such as Ikea’s Kungsbacka kitchen range and Adidas’ Parley trainers have been released with much fanfare. However, these products tend to represent a tiny proportion of the marketplace and often contain a limited amount of recycled plastic.
Incorporating recycled plastics into retail supply chains – and ultimately new products – comes with many challenges, depending on the waste stream the plastics are sourced from, the type of plastic harvested, the quality of reprocessing to turn the plastic back into a raw material resin, and the product application it’s used for.
As recycled plastics generally don’t exhibit the same performance and quality characteristics compared to virgin plastics, their use can be limited – particularly when product appearance is a key selling point. A March 2017 study (pdf) from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation notes that recycled plastics “tend to have a lower aesthetic quality than virgin alternatives, which can make it difficult to expand the use of recycled plastics to parts that are visible to the consumer”.
Common issues manufacturers face in working with recycled plastics include the appearance of moulding defects such as flow lines, lower scratch resistance, and limited availability of colours and finishes, the study says. For example, it’s hard to produce light or bright colours with recycled plastics, or to achieve a high gloss finish. Recycled resins may also contain traces of metallic particles that can cause small imperfections on the surface of a part, making it difficult to paint.
These problems are acknowledged by brands looking to scale up use of such materials. Dell, for example, has set a target to use 100m pounds (45,359 tonnes) of recycled material in its products by 2021, and the lion’s share of this will be plastic.
“Our aim is that the consumer doesn’t see, feel or sense any difference between a product containing recycled plastic and one containing virgin plastic,” says Markus Stutz, Dell’s EMEA director of product compliance engineering and environmental affairs. “We would like to see that every sizeable plastic part contains recycled plastic. That comes with a lot of constraints – it needs to look right, it needs to meet the requirements that we have.”
Philips meanwhile is aiming for 15% of its total revenue to come from products or solutions that are considered circular by 2020, for example by containing at least 30% recycled plastics.
“What’s critical for us is expanding into new products where we currently cannot yet use recycled plastics,” says Eelco Smit, sustainability director at Philips, adding that colour and finish are limiting factors. “High gloss deep black [a popular colour for electric equipment] is still something which is very difficult to achieve with recycled plastics. If we can achieve that … and if we are able to get more colour freedom, then we can use recycled plastics in many more products.”
These could include kitchen appliances like grills, juice blenders and airfryers. Where Philips has made good progress so far is with vacuum cleaners, steam irons and Senseo coffee machines. “Currently we can use recycled plastics very well in darker parts, internal parts, or textured parts. Texture can hide any visual defects that recycled polymers may have. But for parts that are highly visible … that’s going to be the next challenge,” says Smit.
Dell is using recycled plastics predominantly in larger, thicker product parts such as the back covers and stands of computer monitors. Thinner, more fragile devices such as laptops and tablets which can be easily dropped come with higher material performance specifications, which often necessitates the use of virgin materials.
Some of these issues can be circumvented by incorporating virgin plastics into recycled resins to create a recycled-virgin blend – the trade-off is a product part with a lower percentage of recycled plastic in it. Stutz feels there’s an opportunity for material scientists and recyclers to innovate in this area. “The higher hanging fruit is to increase the ratio of recycled plastics to virgin,” he says.
Smit thinks the solution could lie in better value chain integration – for example, strategic partnerships between plastic recyclers, plastic compounders who refine recycled plastics and improve their properties pre-manufacture, and virgin plastic suppliers.
“Some virgin plastics companies are buying up recycling facilities, we’re also seeing recycling companies buying up compounding companies. Both approaches seem to get us to higher qualities, so it may be that they are both winning strategies,” he says.
Stuart Hayward-Higham, technical development director at recycling and resource management firm Suez, acknowledges benefit in such alliances, but questions whether brand owners are placing too much emphasis on back-end solutions. He thinks more could be achieved if companies like his had greater input into the design specifications of plastics from the outset.
“We need the plastics value chain to align and agree some common design standards and production materials, and to prove through testing that you can make a set of resin products that would be acceptable back into the system, and for brands to want to buy them,” he says. “At that point, any part of the value chain can start to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver that outcome.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed by Suez, sponsor of the circular economy hub
