Recycling plastic bottles is good, but reusing them is better

Last week Woolworths announced a new food distribution system, in collaboration with the American company TerraCycle, which provides basic needs for reusable packaging.

The system, called Loop, allows buyers to buy supermarket products from a brand in reusable packaging.

As Australia strives to achieve the national packaging target of 100% recyclable, compostable or reusable Australian packaging by 2025, such programs offer the opportunity to review how plastic packaging is produced, used and recycled.

For more information, this is what happens with our plastic recycling when it goes abroad

Recycling alone is not the magic solution
Plastic packaging, mainly for food and beverages, is the fastest growing category of plastic use.

In Australia, less than 10% of these plastic packaging is recycled, compared to 70% for paper and cardboard packaging.

Recycling water bottles (PET) and milk bottles (HDPA) is the most efficient, but recycling rates remain relatively low at around 30%.

Other hard plastics (PVC, PS) and soft or flexible plastics, such as plastic films and plastic bags, represent a major challenge for recyclers. In the case of soft plastics, although recycling options are available, the use of additives called plasticizers - used to make the plastic hard and soft and malleable - often makes recycled plastic products weak, unsustainable and unusable. further.

Some researchers claim that recycling is actually a dismantling process because plastic packaging is not always recycled in new packaging due to contamination or deterioration in quality.
Even when disposable plastic packaging can be recycled efficiently, this is often not the case. The greater the production of disposable plastic materials, the greater the chance of them entering the ocean and other environments in which their plasticizers dissolve, thereby damaging the wild populations and the people who depend on them.

Zero Waste Europe recently updated its waste hierarchy to focus primarily on preventing and reusing packaging rather than recycling .