Millions of viewers of the BBC’s Blue Planet II will have seen footage of a turtle trapped in a plastic sack and a pilot whale nursing its dead calf. It’s likely to have died from drinking its mother’s plastic-contaminated milk.
The episode prompted environment secretary Michael Gove to tweet: “Still haunted by last night’s #BluePlanet2 – the imperative to do more to tackle plastic in our oceans is clear. We @DefraGovUK will work urgently to identify further action.”
It seems everyone agrees that the issue of ocean plastic is one that requires urgent attention, and the business community has started to respond.
But the task is mammoth and multi-faceted; consumer goods companies struggle to deal with the issue holistically. A new collaboration between global company Henkel and the social enterprise Plastic Bank may provide a template for future action. The manufacturer of brands such as Schwarzkopf, Loctite and Persil (outside the UK) has teamed up with Plastic Bank to help prevent plastic from reaching the ocean, while also providing opportunities for people in Haiti.
When we see marine animals caught in plastic, or huge floating islands of rubbish, the impulse is to demand it be cleaned up. But, according to David Katz, Plastic Bank’s founder, “Cleaning the ocean is the last thing we should be doing.”
“It’s like if you walk into your kitchen and your sink is overflowing – the first thing you do isn’t to clean it up. You turn off the tap. It’s the same with plastic.”
Plastic Bank’s approach is to turn waste plastic – of which about 8m tonnes is dumped into the oceans every year – into an asset for some of the world’s poorest people, to stop it from ever reaching the sea. It was this idea of recycling having a social impact, alongside an environmental one – an approach the organisation calls Social Plastic – that appealed to Henkel, says Marie-Ève Schröder, corporate senior vice-president for international marketing in their beauty care business unit. “Plastic Bank was the only partner we could identify that combined environmental benefits and social benefits. It’s not just about recycling plastic and helping the environment. It also provides a permanent revenue opportunity, often for women.”
The scheme was launched in Haiti, says Katz, “because it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and because when you look at the ocean currents, all the plastic that is washing up on Europe’s beaches comes from places like Haiti”. The Caribbean nation is a substantial source of plastic because it lacks recycling infrastructure. With nowhere to go, the plastic just lies on the ground until it rains, when it is washed into the sea.
Plastic Bank pays people above market prices to collect waste and take it to collection centres. It is then ground into flakes and transported abroad (on cargo ships that otherwise would have returned empty to North America or Europe, for instance). Henkel’s packaging experts are currently researching ways of incorporating the plastic collected into its product packaging in the future.
Collectors can convert the plastic either into cash or other goods, such as cooking fuel, or vouchers that pay for schooling or mobile phone charging. “Often, the collectors are homeless, and a phone number is like your ID – it’s the only way people can contact you and it is the tool connecting you to life and society,” Schröder says.
The first bottles containing recycled ocean plastic – obtained from Plastic Bank and other sources – will hit the shelves in the second half of 2018, says Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum, head of global research and development in Henkel’s laundry and home care unit. “A growing number of customers are asking for sustainable solutions and they want to be able to see what is being done. Ocean plastic will only be a small part of the recycled material that we use, but it is very visible, so it’s important. We want to change our supply chain and move towards a circular economy.”
The partners are planning to expand to other markets in 2018, including Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Brazil, and Plastic Bank is set to announce links with other fast-moving consumer goods companies, to add to its partnerships with Shell, IBM, Marks & Spencer and Henkel.
The organisation was recently awarded a Momentum for Change Lighthouse award by the United Nations at the COP23 Climate Change Conference, in recognition of its “practical and scalable efforts to address climate change and set sustainable development goals”. Katz spent a week at the Vatican, including a meeting with the Pope, looking at ways the world’s 1.2bn Catholics could help to tackle the issue. “What if each of them could bring 500g of plastic a week to church with them? That is enough to change the world,” he says.
Another initiative seeking to redefine the future of plastics is the New Plastics Economy, which kicked off earlier this year and is led by circular economy experts the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It aims to look beyond today’s incremental improvements “to create a shared sense of direction, to spark a wave of innovation and to move the plastics value chain into a positive spiral of value capture, stronger economics, and better environmental outcomes”.
Already, six participants – including Mars, M&S and PepsiCo – have pledged to use 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025 at the latest.
