Recently, recyclability has taken the spotlight as a more sustainable approach to diverting plastic from landfill.

Where We Are

The recent APCO reports show some encouraging trends. Interestingly, there are a few key points that our team believes to be important for the industry to take note.

• We are not expected to meet the 2025 National Packaging Targets (NPT) if nothing is done.
• Of the five material groups for post-consumer packaging, the item with the lowest recovery rate is plastics (at 16% recovery rate) and has remained at that level for the period of 2017-18 to 2019-20.

Those familiar with the APCO targets will already be aware that one of the targets is to have 70% of plastic packaging to be recycled. As of today, we are a long way off from achieving that target.

 

Where Do We Go From Here

With the public perception of plastic declining, some businesses may see plastic as a problem “too difficult to solve” and opt for the easy way out – Banning or cancelling soft plastics throughout the packaging supply chain.

We at Thinkpac fully support the APCO position and view this as an opportunity for innovation.

• In 2019-20, 45% of packaging was disposed in landfill and this represents a loss of approximately $360 million.
• Did you know that 1.9 tons of greenhouse gas emissions could have been avoided if this material had been recycled?

Why banning/cancelling soft plastic is not the answer

With any wide-scale problem, the answer is not as simple as yes and no. Soft plastic products have a wide range of commercial applications that may not be obvious to the general public.

With the right program and stakeholder collaboration across the supply chain, soft plastics has a useful purpose and place to stay in circular packaging.

 

Our role in the Circular Economy

Thinkpac has been recycling soft plastic into high quality feedstock for our manufacturing plant for a number of years and we believe that we are uniquely positioned in the market to lead the way for circular packaging for soft plastics.

If you would like to find out how we can help you with sustainable/circular packaging for your business, click here.