TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 10/23 www.petpla.net 43 chemical processes – would not be appropriate in California, which has never had a glut of water and is now suffering a years-long drought. Collection services in some parts of the UK and the wider world are sparse or non-existent. The point was made that there must be more buy-in from brands but it was also pointed out that such participation may well require incentives, either financial or legislative. In this context, Paul Davidson, Challenge Director for the Smart Sustainable Challenge Fund, which is managed by UK Research and Investment (UKRI), outlined a competition being offered within the fund’s budget of up to £60 million (EUR 69 million), for “ambitious” early stage projects in investigating ways to reduce, reuse or recycle plastics. While there is, ultimately, no substitute for the infrastructure and physical capacity to recycle plastics, especially including PET food packaging, Dan Dicker, CEO & Founder, Circular & Co, made a strong argument for the importance of design. His company works with global brands on developing closed loop systems, designing for reuse and recycling from initial concept to finished item, striving to avoid finished products getting into the waste stream in the first place. Current and future developments James Wigzell, Technical Sales Support Representative, Avery Dennison (AD), described the company’s CleanFlake adhesive technology, which is designed to support the recycling of PET and HDPE packaging. During PET recycling, the adhesive deactivates to allow both label and adhesive to separate cleanly. In the case of coloured HDPE recycling, the label stays attached but does not compromise the resulting plastic pellets. AD took the decision to offer only CleanFlake labels from last year. James said it was the sort of bold decision he would encourage other companies to act similarly, in order to improve the whole recycling landscape. Jan Hommen joined Tomra in 2021, to focus on Circular Plastic Applications. Tomra is well known for reverse vending machines for collection of used beverage containers and is a leading manufacturer of PET sorting and recycling equipment. It is a strong advocate of circular manufacturing solutions. He advised that the plastics industry is planning to manufacture at least 10 million tonnes of plastics entirely from recycled material by 2030. While Tomra is encouraging suppliers to sort mixed waste and take out plastic items, in order to avoid emissions trading scheme (ETS) fees, he also described how the company is addressing the challenge of poor separation across waste collection by planning to recover one to two million tonnes of plastic from mixed waste, and to save 2.5 to 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions through recycling processes. Bryony Rothwell, Recap Partnership Manager, Cambridgeshire County Council, discussed the approach of local government in the UK to recycling and waste management, in the light of a significant drop in recycling rates. She said that the drop has arisen from changes in packaging and talked about the need to capture and process non-recyclable materials and emphasised the importance of encouraging behaviour change in the public, to divert waste from waterways. Education and simplicity, systems and buy-in The public is undoubtedly much more conscious of environmental issues. People are very much in favour of change but it is a bit more difficult to get them to change themselves. Two of the leading takeaways from the conference were the need for education, especially to overcome plastic phobia, and an urgent need to make reuse, recovery and recycling easy. The simpler the process, the more that the public and the whole value chain will be engaged and participate. Successful implementation of effective recycling – ideally, building efficient circular manufacturing – starts at the design stage and involves everyone, from material suppliers to consumers. Brands and manufacturers should not wait for legislation; they should be doing it for commercial and ESG reasons. www.recoup.org
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