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Recycled plastic in packaging is plastic which has come from recycled materials. For example, plastic bottles that we recycle at home are sorted, cleaned, melted and made back into plastic bottles or other items. Sometimes you might see information on a product that says (for example) 100% recycled content, which means that the packaging has been made using 100% sourced recycled plastic.
This provides many benefits to the environment. Almost all virgin plastic is derived from fossil fuels, and the process of manufacturing plastic creates hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. The more virgin plastic we make, the more fossil fuels we need, the more we contribute to climate change. We need to remove plastic where we can (where it doesn’t lead to other environmental impacts) but where we can’t, using recycled materials is important. In fact, making a plastic bottle from recycled plastic takes 75% less energy!
Because of the positive impact on the environment, a group of UK leading brands, retailers, governments and NGOs have joined forces through The UK Plastics Pact with an aim to make all plastic packaging contain a minimum of 30% recycled plastic by 2025. Progress is already being made, with the average percentage of recycled plastic in packaging having doubled since 2018 to 18%. Incredibly, this equates to saving just over one million barrels of virgin oil and 140,000 tonnes of CO2ₑ !
Here are some great examples of progress being made:
Mondelez is to move its Cadbury Dairy Milk sharing bars into recycled plastic packaging. The new packs, which contain up to 30% recycled plastic, will be rolled out across more than 28 million sharing bars in 2022.
Hellman’s will transition its ‘squeezy’ range in the UK to bottles made from 100% recycled plastic. Nearly half of the range has already moved to the recycled plastic material, with plans for the full range to have switched by the end of 2022. Once complete it will save approximately 1,480 tonnes of virgin plastic every year!
PepsiCo has switched Pepsi Maxx and 7UP to 100% recycled content plastic bottles. The company aims to use 100% recycled plastic for all its ready-to-drink bottles in the UK by the end of 2022.
Businesses are also working to improve how recyclable their packaging is, so that more plastic gets recycled and stays in the system – for instance Sprite recently changed its green bottle to a transparent bottle so that it is easier to recycle into new packaging (read more about this here).
Retailers are also accepting more varied colours of recycled plastic to go into the packaging of items that they sell. You may have noticed that some supermarkets now sell microwave meals in trays that range from pink to purple, or maybe grey. The fact that the supermarkets are selling this packaging which varies in colour means that more plastic can stay in the system and recycled into more plastic packaging rather than get wasted.
