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Zero Waste Europe's Janek Vahk on Europe's new packaging waste laws
107 Plays1 year ago
Mike, Anthony, and a back-from-vacation Karthik tackle all the news, including COP28, the carbon footprint of plastic pyrolysis, and the important issue of kangaroo derived carbon credits. Then, they sit down with Zero Waste Europe's Janek Vahk to break down the recent Packaging and Packaging Waste regulations. We discuss the regulation's wins, failures, and what the best path is for plastic waste sustainability.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Innovation Matters. It is the innovation podcast by Lux Research. I'm your host, Anthony Schiavo. I'm joined by my co-hosts, Karthik Subraman, who is back from vacation. He's looking healthy. He's looking refreshed.
00:00:24
Speaker
You can't see this, but he's got the big sunglasses. He's got the big vacation hat. It's incredible. I don't know what the other... I don't know what the visual signifiers of being on vacation are other than his skin tone. He's looking wonderful. He's looking relaxed. And we've also got Mike Holman here as well.
00:00:49
Speaker
Hey, it's it is the very last day of November, right? November 30th. Is that correct? Do we have a November 31st? Anyway, it's definitely November 30th.
UN COP Conference Significance
00:01:00
Speaker
It's the first day of COP that is the UN Conference of Parties. And we're going to we're going to talk about that because this is the only podcast I'm sure that is going to talk about the UN Conference of Parties and what it means for what it means for the future.
00:01:15
Speaker
But before we get into that, Karthik, how have you been? It's been lonely without you here. Yeah, things are much better this week than last week because when I was in India, India lost the World Cup final, which, yeah, bummed. The stunning conclusion of the arc, the long running innovation matters. Cricket arc is that India, who did they lose to? Australia.
00:01:44
Speaker
They lost to Australia. Dang. Wasn't there a big scandal?
Cricket Scandals and Public Reactions
00:01:49
Speaker
No, it was the British, not the Australians. This isn't like the olden days, but they pitched the wrong way or something. They were pitching, they were bowling right at the knees. I don't know. I only know three things about cricket. Most of them you've told me.
00:02:10
Speaker
And I'm not aware of that. I know that the Australians use sandpaper to, you know, change the way the ball moves and stuff. And then they got caught doing it like they got caught cheating on camera. And then the captain cried in the press conference. It was very funny. Is this is this this year or like? No, this was in 2019, 2019. OK, so what's the vibe when India loses? Is it like a Philly Eagles type situation where people are like burning cars or like what? What's what's the general vibe?
00:02:42
Speaker
That has happened before but people don't want cars but they like break television sets and stuff that's happened before but this time it was very somber like I just could sense you know like zero energy among people I remember two companies I think gave the next day off so that people can you know like get back to being their normal selves so that was quite fun but yeah good to be back and good to discuss trends and innovations
00:03:10
Speaker
in sustainability. One thing that's not sustainable is burning couches. That was always what we did at Virginia Tech. Whenever we won a big game or lost a big game, there would just be burning couches everywhere. I remember when we beat Ohio State. Really rough for your carbon footprint. It's not good for your carbon footprint. That's my advice to any young college student.
00:03:32
Speaker
And yeah, it's just, I guess I would just say, if you are planning on celebrating any major winter loss, do so in a way that, you know, results in negative carbon emissions. Maybe plant a tree. Or alternatively,
00:03:50
Speaker
Um, if you're in Australia and you want to celebrate this win, we have an incredible, we have an incredibly innovative solution for you, which is you can beat up a kangaroo instead.
Australia's Carbon Credit Projects
00:04:03
Speaker
And this will, this will save, uh, this will save the planet. Mike, can you give us the lowdown on this, this story, which you brought to my attention?
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, apparently, you know, this this, we wanted to talk about it, not just because it's funny, but because it sort of ties into the whole theme around carbon credits. And I guess there's some projects in Australia that have been trying to claim carbon credits based on kangaroo control. And, you know, control over kangaroos and other other grazing animals to be to be livestock and stuff to be to be fair, but
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, the idea is that if you keep kangaroos off certain areas of land and other grazing animals, then you will have more plant growth, more trees will grow in those areas, and that you can claim carbon credits based on all of the carbon that those trees will sequester as they grow.
00:05:06
Speaker
Now the researchers- What's the net impact of this? How many kangaroos do we have to punch to stop climate change? Well, like negative kangaroos because it doesn't actually work. There's this group of academics from Australia who are pointing out that one, a lot of the land that this is being
00:05:32
Speaker
claimed for is sort of like arid scrub land that you're not really going to get a lot of trees growing on this area anyway, kangaroos or no. And then to
00:05:45
Speaker
In fact, to the extent that kangaroos or other animals do graze on this land, you might actually get more forest growth because they eat the small plants and undergrowth and stuff like that. And that actually opens up more room for you. You tend to get more, what's the term for it? It's like woody densification or something like that.
00:06:11
Speaker
So this was sort of a particular, particularly comical example of it.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. So Australians, we're revising our stance. The official Innovation Matters advice to Australians is do not punch a kangaroo. And if you do punch a kangaroo, know that you are contributing to global climate change.
COP28 in Dubai and UAE's Climate Role
00:06:39
Speaker
Just like the people who have flown, I think 70,000 or 80,000 people have flown this year.
00:06:40
Speaker
But it
00:06:47
Speaker
Uh, to the 28th conference of parties, um, which is of course the big, uh, climate meeting every year. Um, it is being held, I want to say in, uh, the UAE this year. Correct. Um, Dubai. Dubai. Um, Dubai, of course, notable champion of, of climate change, um, of doing climate change. I should, I should clarify.
00:07:17
Speaker
not of stopping climate change. This feels like history repeating itself as first as tragedy and then as farce. We had COP26. It was this big moment of ambition, but also, I think even at that time, recognition that we weren't doing enough.
00:07:42
Speaker
And now, two years later, we have COP28, which is unabashedly. We've given, you know, the chair of COP2, you know, this nation that is like a major contributor to climate change and is extremely dependent on fossil fuels.
00:08:00
Speaker
And the focus of the meeting is basically how can we continue to have fossil fuels be a part of the part of the energy ecosystem as opposed to phasing them out. And it's painful, honestly. It is farcical. I don't know. Karthik, what do you think about this? I know this is something that you would want to talk about.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. I mean, even COP 27 last year was all about, in my opinion, Africa's agenda to talk about climate mitigation and getting funding for the countries that are actually affected by climate change more than the others because they don't emit so much.
00:08:44
Speaker
not really talking about innovation per se. This year, I think it's going to talk about why oil and gas is very important in the energy transition, why we cannot get rid of oil. I was at a conference recently where Petronas was actually one of the speakers and they said, the returns that you get from selling oil is what's actually going to fund your RE projects. You can't just solely deploy solar and wind and expect that to generate enough revenue to keep deploying more projects moving forward.
00:09:13
Speaker
That said, personally, for me, I think not just the UAE, but the Middle East in general, if I were to play devil's advocate to say, hey, there is something positive out of this, is that they have a lot of money and they always put innovation at the forefront of whatever they do.
00:09:31
Speaker
because optics is very important in the Middle East, how people view the Middle East and how it's becoming a center of innovation is quite fascinating for me.
Middle East and Sustainability Innovation
00:09:40
Speaker
So maybe this could be a cop because cop is actually kicking off today. So we really don't know how it's going to transpire. But for me personally, and maybe Mike, you may disagree with what I'm saying, but I think a lot of good things could come out of this cop where the Middle East actually do talk about doing
00:09:58
Speaker
a lot in terms of sustainable innovation and actually pumping a lot of funds into sustainable innovation. Yeah, and I think they will. I think there's definitely investments going into hydrogen and things like that in the region and from oil and gas companies in general. I think we are actually starting to see a more significant
00:10:28
Speaker
you know, investments in some of these projects from large players in the industry. But the sort of the whole tone and emphasis on like, oh, we got to figure out how we can keep using oil. I mean, it is true, obviously, like oil isn't going to be going away anytime soon, even I think in the most aggressive and optimistic scenarios.
00:10:52
Speaker
In principle, yeah, you can use the profits from oil and gas projects to fund more of these green investments. Shell's made that case as well as Petronas, as you referenced, a lot of people in the industry have.
00:11:13
Speaker
you know, there's always going to be the temptation to, and we've seen it with Shell and others, right, to kind of revert back to like, well, we're not earning a high enough return on these wind projects. So we're going to revert to more, to more investments in oil and gas. And I think that's
00:11:30
Speaker
you know, as much as it is good that the industry is investing in some of these greener technologies, and you know, they understand, okay, like, ultimately, the demand for oil is going to be going down, and we need to transition to something else. You know, there's a role for the oil and gas companies to play, but I think if they're sort of taking center stage, it's not a particularly bullish sign for the kind of climate progress we want to see.
00:11:57
Speaker
I mean, isn't the point that Patronus made just sort of wrong in the abstract? Like, there are dedicated companies who only do wind and solar, and who entirely fund their growth through wind and solar. So, I mean, Patronus is basically saying, oh, like, you can't get the rate of return you want on wind and solar. That's the issue. It's just that they don't make as much money as the, you know, oil and gas projects that Patronus is currently investing in.
00:12:28
Speaker
It's not that you can't actually fund the growth of wind and solar through wind and solar projects. That's, that's imminently doable. They just don't want to do it, right? Or it just is challenging and has, you know, financial. Orsted's stock price is getting crushed this year. It's, uh, the interest rates and all that stuff. I mean, but the thing about the innovation point that you made, like the innovation is, uh, I don't want to say it's fake, but a lot of the innovation is fake. Like, you know, I don't want to be like,
00:12:57
Speaker
For every legitimate sustainability project, there's going to be two NEOMs, or the lines, or whatever. Actually, shade on NEOM. We are shading NEOM here. NEOM is stupid. Sorry.
00:13:16
Speaker
The line is an insane, insane waste of resources. And that's just because you have this money and there's a huge amount of money and a huge amount of resources tied up in the Middle East. And that's good to put it towards sustainability, but that money is not directed through channels that are
00:13:46
Speaker
well managed, that are democratically managed, that are, you know, efficiently managed, right? Or that have and have legitimate interests in sustainability, right? They're directed through these channels that have very strong financial interests and very strong
00:14:01
Speaker
interests in maintaining the value in oil and gas resources, right? So that money just is very limited in the impact it can have, the positive material impact it can have. And it has a big opportunity to have really negative impacts, right? And like, putting the dress of, you know, the UN, which is this theoretically democratic, or at least, I don't know, sort of international institution on it is
00:14:28
Speaker
doesn't change that. And in fact, it could go further and could even disguise that negative, those true negative drivers of this money. So that's why I say it's farcical. You have this institution that has these big goals of stopping climate change and of equity. And it's like, oh, and our partner this year is like,
00:14:55
Speaker
the fossil fuel producing slave labor, maintaining Middle Eastern country. It's just ridiculous. But I think the COP28 also goes beyond the Middle East, especially looking at developing nations. I think they can make the argument, all the developed nations have already burnt enough oil to develop their economies and get to where they are. So it's our turn to do it so that we can also develop our economies.
00:15:23
Speaker
Then the question really becomes how can they sustainably, and by they, I mean, developing countries, how can they sustainably make that switch and develop at the same time? And I think that's where the challenge lies, and I hope they address that at COP this year. Yeah, I mean, it's true to the actual agenda, right? Yeah, that's going to be one of the big, I mean, it was a big focus at COP 27, and I think it's going to continue to be here.
00:15:54
Speaker
And I don't know if having it in Dubai is going to make that much of a difference one way or the other on that, to certainly to some extent the Emirates are interested to align to more of these developing nations and
00:16:18
Speaker
I could see them being a little bit more aggressive about pushing that than if it was like Sheridan, Germany or the US or something. Something like that. But that's still going to be a tough area to get real commitments and agreements around. But I think it is important that COP keeps pushing on that. And we're not going to get, you know, I'm very skeptical we'd get the level of investment that's really needed. But I think to the extent that they can get
00:16:47
Speaker
whatever level of commitments they can get from these developed countries to investments in these type of infrastructure projects in more developing countries is actually something that has a really positive impact, both in terms of climate and in terms of general human rights and development in these areas, being able to build out infrastructure in some of these places.
00:17:14
Speaker
All right, I think I think we've exhausted what we need to say on cop. I don't know. I'm a cop hater, a cab. That's the official Scrabble take on this one. It's the it's the the the army we have, not necessarily the the the the one we deserve. And, you know,
00:17:36
Speaker
To some extent, having the oil and gas industry inside the tent rather than outside of it is... I sort of see the strategic rationale for that as a bit comical as it is.
Oil Industry's Dual Role in Sustainability
00:17:53
Speaker
I know.
00:17:55
Speaker
I mean, I see it as well. The oil and gas industry, the thing about them is that if you look at the institutions with the skill and capability to actually do large scale infrastructure construction, it is the oil and gas industry. I mean, I think we shouldn't have gotten to the point where, for example, governments are completely incapable of building large scale infrastructure, like the American government or whatever.
00:18:20
Speaker
That's bad, and we should try and reverse that. But given that we're in that situation, I understand that those are the institutions that actually have the actual capability to build this stuff. But I don't have to like it. You can't make me like it. You just can't, and I won't.
00:18:40
Speaker
And that's why we have this podcast for things that I don't like. Speaking of which, in today's rundown of things I don't like, we got a really incredible blog post from the American Plastic Makers, which is a basically a lobbying arm of the American Chemistry Council, longtime personal nemesis of me, and also of just I don't know,
00:19:12
Speaker
people with an interest
Plastic Pyrolysis and Misleading Claims
00:19:13
Speaker
in sustainability.
00:19:31
Speaker
academic work or science more generally, and I just wanted to kind of highlight it for that reason. Basically, the blog post, there's a study that was published by ANL, Argonne National Lab, about they have a big data tool that they use for life cycle assessments of plastic recycling and particularly plastic pyrolysis, this high temperature process of converting plastics back into oil. And the blog post, you know, basically said, hey, good news.
00:20:00
Speaker
ANL has found that plastic pyrolysis actually reduces carbon emissions by 18 to 20%. And maybe in some situations it can go even higher. And framed this as like, hey, the data shows that if you put 5% in pyrolysis oil into a plastic production process, you get a 20% reduction in carbon emissions, right?
00:20:29
Speaker
and it's total garbage. Basically, none of what they claim is really true at all. There's a lot of different things that are egregious about it, but the few I want to flag up here. One is that the
00:20:52
Speaker
the blog represents the data as being we have gotten actual real production data from real operating pyrolysis facilities. That's one of the direct lines in the blog, which is true, kind of. Real production data was theoretically used, but ANL surveyed eight
00:21:14
Speaker
facilities and then use that data to make a bunch of projections about the future of the technology. So what everything that's referenced is projections about the future state of the technology, which is not how it's represented. Secondly, the blog leaves out the fact that today's pyrolysis technologies all actually increase carbon emissions, which is a pretty big, pretty big
00:21:44
Speaker
you know, misstep, I would say. And then- Bit of a yikes. Bit of a yikes. Bit of a yikes. And then lastly, the vlog basically says, dang, like, this is just at a 5% loading. Imagine what would happen if we increase the loading. It must be crazy. Anyway, I'm sure it's good. The actual study does calculate what happens if you go above a 5% loading. And the answer is carbon emissions go up.
00:22:16
Speaker
because of both the way that the mass balancing approach that they use to calculate this carbon emissions reduction really dramatically amplifies the impact at low loadings. And also, if you go above 5% loading for process reasons, you have to put a bunch more energy into the system to improve the quality of the oil. So it's just like, I know
00:22:43
Speaker
I don't even know what to say about it other than just like people are out here just straight up lying on maine and it's it's just it's just frustrating like I get that that's their job but like what if like what if a politician like politicians are all morons that's the thing like you just they just can't be trusted to understand like facts and like what if a politician reads this like
00:23:10
Speaker
I mean, it's an interesting study, not just to, you know, hate on the ACC or worry about politicians misunderstanding it, because I mean, it actually is like this, it's interesting and this is this pretty nuanced
00:23:28
Speaker
The study is really interesting, right? It's this pretty nuanced take on, on, on paralysis where, you know, I think part of the claim is like, okay, as these plants, they, they're not, they're, they're higher emitting now, but as they, as they scale up, the emissions could, could come down and it, it could be to the point where, you know, it becomes, like, that's actually reasonable. There it's, you know, not presented in a particularly transparent way in this like blog post, but
00:23:54
Speaker
The point, the more interesting point is this issue with the amount of plastic waste, pyrolysis oil that you can actually feed into this process. And the fact that when you increase the amount of waste feedstock basically that you're using in this system, the emissions benefit actually goes down, which I think just kind of points to the fundamental challenge with
00:24:21
Speaker
this type of chemical recycling, this paralysis, which is that the quality of the paralysis oil is like much lower quality than what you get from petroleum. And so you either have to invest a lot of extra effort and extra energy in upgrading it, or you just lower your yields of quality product that you get out or so low.
00:24:49
Speaker
Um, that, uh, you know, trying to, you can get away with 5% basically without really affecting the process. But, but if you try to go up to 20, you need, you need to do a lot more to get quality product out. Um, and that's, that's kind of the core challenge with this. It's like, oh,
00:25:08
Speaker
And there's a core tension there, which is if you scale the technology to get all these improvements, and I think it is possible that you could get to the point with enough scale and enough improvement of maturity in the technology that it does actually reduce carbon emissions, especially compared to something like incineration or whatever. But to get to that point and to that scale, you are absolutely going to have to be pushing the technology to the level of
00:25:40
Speaker
going well past that 5% mark. The benefits structurally are really the most intense when you're at this low-level loading, but to actually get the technology to work, I think you have to go pretty far past that level. So there's this very fundamental contradiction there with these technologies and how they scale.
00:26:00
Speaker
And, um, yeah, it's just, don't be, don't be scaling up conventional pyrolysis. I'm once again begging the world not to do this. I don't know. It's just, it was just frustrating to read and frustrating to see, like.
00:26:19
Speaker
And there are better ways, right? There was a video, we're going to give a little gold star here, a little thumbs up to BASF, who put out a really good marketing video about how they're planning to integrate pyrolysis into this larger scale recycling infrastructure and the way it fits and the way it enables other technologies that are very sustainable, like mechanical recycling. Hey, when you do mechanical recycling, you end up with a lot of other stuff left over. What do you do with that?
00:26:47
Speaker
It's like, oh, if you want to scale mechanical recycling, you need something to absorb this other waste. And it's like, oh, this is part of an ecosystem.
00:26:55
Speaker
is useful, is valuable. It's like, oh, there's actually really good, meaningful arguments to be made for this technology. And like, people are doing them, making those arguments. And like, my nemesis, the American Chemistry Council, like steadfastly refuses to even do a good job of like, lobbying, which is like frustrating. It's just like, come on, guys, we can we can do better. Please. Yeah, I mean, with pyrolysis and not to stay too long on this topic.
00:27:25
Speaker
The one thing I do know is that while I'm not a chemistry expert and I don't follow the pyrolysis space specifically, I do know that they use pyrolysis for thermally recycling solar panels. And it's not just the carbon emissions that you have to look at. You always have issues with fluoride emissions and other harmful gas into the atmosphere, which is not good, and health hazards. So it has led to the development of different low temperature methods that can separate different layers and recycle different
00:27:55
Speaker
components of a solar panel, things like that. So I guess innovations have to focus on that side rather than just pyrolysis at this point, even if it reduces GFT emissions. And that's why we've seen a lot of consumer local level pushback against pyrolysis plants, especially large scale ones.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, sorry. That's one of the other things that I thought was interesting about that BASF video is they were not only pointing out how paralysis was complimentary with mechanical recycling, but also talking about some of the innovations that they were pursuing to help enable mechanical
00:28:35
Speaker
recycling, right, like a lot of the energy that is consumed by mechanical recycling is from the washing steps in the plastic. So they were trying to, you know, we've created these additives or cleaning agents that can enable you to wash the plastics with a lower temperature of water. That saves a lot of energy in the process. These are some of the additives that make plastics more easy to mechanically recycle. So, you know, from an innovation standpoint, also, that's that's the other kind of thing. I think it's
00:29:03
Speaker
valuable for those those kind of companies to be to be thinking about is not just like okay we can use paralysis oil to slot into our existing processes but there's also opportunities in enabling other types of recycling to go more as well.
European Plastic Regulations
00:29:23
Speaker
I think that plastic waste has been one of the most visible issues of sustainability in the especially the consumer eye but also in the eye of
00:29:32
Speaker
government, corporations over the last four to five years, and plastic waste has really become this hot button issue, but it's also become the focus of a lot of government legislation. We've had some guests on this podcast who are focused on plastic reuse
00:29:51
Speaker
But I really wanted to zoom out because it's been a very, very consequential week for plastic regulation, especially in Europe. And we really have the perfect guest to talk about that with us today. I'm super delighted to have Janek Vac, the zero pollution policy manager from Zero Waste Europe, joining us today on the podcast. Janek, how are you? Good. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Anthony.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's really a pleasure. Yannick and I is someone who I've communicated with many times over the years, as we've sort of dealt with these sustainability issues and policy issues and someone who I really have a lot of respect for in terms of their understanding of these challenges, especially in Europe.
00:30:35
Speaker
So maybe we can just start, Janek. You could tell us a little bit about yourself, but also Zero Waste Europe. I think maybe a lot of our listeners aren't familiar with your organization, what it does and its goals. So maybe we can start there.
00:30:49
Speaker
Absolutely. So yeah, so as for Syro, we stew up, we are relatively a new organization. Formally, we were established in 2014. We are European brands of Kaya. So we
00:31:07
Speaker
We are a European network. We have members in 28 countries, so not only European Union countries, but also some other countries in Europe. And so we bring together experts, NGOs and change makers. And our goal is very simple. We want to eliminate waste in our society, as our name says, zero waste Europe. So that's our goal.
00:31:35
Speaker
And as for me, I have been now, we sit on West Europe for about eight years and my focus is really end of life treatment mostly. So I work on things that, you know, how to manage things that at the end of its life.
00:31:58
Speaker
I work a lot on some of the things such as chemical recycling, but also incineration, landfilling, material recovery. But of course I, you know, me work as a team here. Yeah, actually 23 stuff in Brussels.
00:32:16
Speaker
And increasingly, our focus is on kind of upstream, because it became very clear to us, if you really want to address the waste generation issue, you need to tackle the problems at the beginning and not at the very end. So yeah, that's about me.
00:32:41
Speaker
Awesome. And the thing we really brought you on to discuss, which I think is really interesting, is the recent vote in the EU parliament on the packaging and packaging waste regulation, or PPWR. So as I understand it, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong here, this is really part of the broader sort of
00:33:07
Speaker
There's been the single-use plastic directives. There are these very high-level EU directives around sustainability, the Green Deal. And this is one of the things that has sort of fallen out of that. It is a set of regulations and laws that more directly dictate what is required in terms of things like waste collection, things like reporting, things like the goals and targets for
00:33:35
Speaker
the different types of plastic packaging waste and packaging waste a bit more generally, how the countries in the EU actually have to manage these wastes. And we had this big vote. There were a lot of things, as I understand, a lot of different amendments that were proposed. Ultimately, we got a mix of some of those. Maybe I'm just curious from the start,
00:34:00
Speaker
Zero Waste Europe put out a stance basically saying, hey, we're disappointed. This didn't go far enough. This wasn't enough. I guess I'm curious, what were you really looking for? What were the big misses? And maybe what were the big successes in the PPWR vote and in this legislation?
00:34:17
Speaker
Indeed, first of all, as you said, the packaging and the packaging waste regulation, it's a really big thing for us. Honestly, our focus is mostly on municipal waste and packaging is the majority of that waste in Europe.
00:34:37
Speaker
So it's a big thing. And what is clear is that if you really want to address waste generation, we need to focus on the reduction and reuse. There is no other way. In fact, a couple of months ago, we put out reports, which mainly look at the things from the carbon perspective. And it became very, very clear there is no way we can
00:35:04
Speaker
keep to the carbon budget unless we have a huge reduction in plastics put out on the market. We're talking about 50% reduction. So coming from there,
00:35:24
Speaker
So for us, the reuse part was like the most important thing. And unfortunately, it didn't go very well for the reuse.
00:35:37
Speaker
But there are still quite a number of good things. So let me just mention a couple of them. The first thing, and quite surprisingly, are the waste prevention targets. And so we have now, I think it's the first time actually, because there are no other waste prevention targets anywhere in the EU legislation. So for the first time we have
00:36:01
Speaker
specific waste prevention targets. So we have 5% packaging waste reduction by 2030, 10% by 2045 and 15% by 2040. And here we talk about for all the materials. We also have
00:36:18
Speaker
specific waste prevention targets for plastic packaging. These are even higher. So we have a 10% by 2030 and 20% by 2045. So this is a big win, I would say. And as I said, apart from in addition to waste prevention targets, we really wanted to have also reuse targets.
00:36:45
Speaker
So, apart from kind of phasing out the kind of packaging that is what we consider unnecessary, you also need to move towards reuse. And here what happened is that a lot of the different targets were removed.
00:37:06
Speaker
So, first of all, already initially, in the Environment Committee, the targets, for example, for food and beverage takeaway were removed. And now, when it comes to the vote in the plenary, so where the parliament agreed on its final kind of so-called position,
00:37:32
Speaker
We have targets for non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages. We're talking about 20% reuse for 2030 and 45% for 2040. For example, for non-alcoholic and 10% for 2030 and 25% for 2040 for alcoholic drinks. But there, several exemptions were introduced. So for example, wine, spirits and milk were taken out of scope.
00:38:03
Speaker
And these targets could be also achieved by, for example, by enabling refiller. So yeah, and there is also another big derogation in case, for example, member states achieve at least 85% collection rate or recycling rate, then they would not need to comply with the reuse targets. So there is a
00:38:33
Speaker
There was a competition between recycling and reuse. And it seems like recycling won. But, you know, there were also some good things. And most importantly, also one of the big priorities for us is the depository funds scheme, which also enables reuse. Unfortunately, most of it is currently focused on single use.
00:38:56
Speaker
But most of the amendments that try to kind of weaken or make DRS voluntary were rejected. So that's very, very positive. So yeah, and that, for us, it's clear that we need to have a DRS if we want to have a high level such a pre-collection.
00:39:18
Speaker
Also, very interesting is that they agreed on having 90% separate collection target. It's really, really ambitious. And I think that's really a positive thing. And well, maybe, yeah, just also when it comes to, because, you know, we will be talking a little bit about afterwards about the recycled content and the ways of allocation. So there was,
00:39:48
Speaker
also some wording accepted which allows meeting for example recycling content targets by using pyro-based plastics. We can discuss if this is positive or negative but it's not over yet just to let you know. I mean because now the next step is really that the parliament will
00:40:15
Speaker
start negotiations with the European Council, which represents the member states, where the final kind of text will be agreed upon. Just for reference on some of those collection targets, you mentioned 85% or 90%. What is that at right now in the EU? It depends on the type of plastic, I'm sure. Yes.
00:40:41
Speaker
Exactly. There's a lot of variation now. For example, for us, it's very clear you're not going to be able to have a 90% collection unless you have a DRA on most of the types of packaging, which unfortunately is not the case. As I said, it will mainly focus on soft drinks and beer, a lot of exceptions.
00:41:05
Speaker
So yeah, the current collection rates are around, depending on the country, maybe 50, 60 maximum. For our listeners, first of all, a DRS, that's a deposit return scheme, right? Yes. So when you buy a drink or you buy any packaged good,
00:41:26
Speaker
You pay a little extra when you return that, not just recycle it, but specifically return it with a separate collection, you get that deposit back. And that's something that we have in America in some limited cases. It's pretty minimal. I think it's very, I think it's most successful in Germany, as I understand.
00:41:49
Speaker
Certainly, I got yelled at the last time I was in Germany, I think, for misallocating a piece of waste. My ignorant American self was not prepared to manage the German waste economy. I guess when you look at this group of potential legislations, you talked about the waste reduction targets, you talked about these collection targets, and then you talked about some of the specific
00:42:19
Speaker
incentives for various what we might call sustainable options, whether that's recycling, whether that's bio-based, whether that's maybe reuse as a sort of a different ecosystem. How
00:42:30
Speaker
Which of these do you think is really going to be most crucial to driving sustainable outcomes? You spoke a lot about the DRS. I'm curious there because one of the things we've heard from, say, the reuse companies we've had on this podcast is that their goal is to really make it economical to engage in reuse kind of absent from any legislation. And you hear this a lot from some recycling companies as well. Obviously, they're all pushing for favorable legislation.
00:42:59
Speaker
A lot of them say, oh, we can make the economies work, even if it doesn't. So I guess I'm just curious as to how you see this, where you really see the levers of impact being within this types of legislation.
Reuse Systems Versus Recycling in EU Legislation
00:43:15
Speaker
You mean particularly in relation to TRS?
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, DRS versus the waste reduction targets. What do you see as the biggest opportunity, especially thinking about America, right? America has none of this type of legislation. What should we be doing or what's the most impactful thing we could try and do, either on a state level or a national level here? I'm just curious.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, we actually, we have developed our own roadmap for plastics as a material. Well, maybe it's, yeah, we can go beyond plastics, of course. When you talk about packaging in general,
00:43:57
Speaker
I think for us, the packaging is actually one of the main waste items. And it's very short-lived. It can just be a few hours or a few minutes. So our focus is really on that. And so what we think is that the packaging actually has a huge potential for reuse. And there's also
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, so we are looking into, we are currently, we have, we are working with a number of cities in Europe trying to put in place the infrastructure for reuse and we have, you know, we have also looked into the cost of doing so.
00:44:44
Speaker
and building for example nationwide infrastructure for some of the reuse so maybe specifically I can mention we are looking at currently the beverages we also look at and take away and we're looking into also some
00:45:02
Speaker
secondary transport packaging. And it's actually very interesting that it's not at all costly. You have some upfront costs, but building the whole nationwide infrastructure would start already paying back after three to five years. So I'm not talking about just, you know, the board itself, it's really the infrastructure for
00:45:29
Speaker
for returning it for the whole system. And that's where we think that the biggest opportunity is to address the based issue.
00:45:44
Speaker
So it really has to focus. So our main focus is predict that needs to be on, first of all, of course, phasing out the things that we don't really need. So there actually the parliament failed us because, for example, in terms of bans of certain types of packaging, they
00:46:03
Speaker
Unfortunately, the industry was able to make the case that some packaging, like for the fruits and vegetable, is still necessary. So we were not able to phase out some of this packaging, which is totally unnecessary. There's no need, for example, to put the plastics around the bananas or apples.
00:46:23
Speaker
So this packaging could be easily phased out. We think that around 20% of this type of packaging is unnecessary. And then the reuse has a huge potential, particularly, I would say, for takeaway. It has some of the fastest pre-given points. So only three years for the whole infrastructure.
00:46:43
Speaker
And then, of course, when we go down the line, of course, recycling will have to come in still for the rest. And here, of course, we have, we believe we have this kind of
00:47:02
Speaker
two approach. So first of all is the kind of, we call it a winning formula for achieving high levels of separate collection and that's total collection combined with a pay-as-you-throw which gives the economic incentive for you to sort it
00:47:23
Speaker
the waste well in combination with DRS and mixed waste sorting. So all these four things together, they will help you to achieve at least 90% separate collection, waste not separate, I mean collection rate, material collection rate.
00:47:41
Speaker
And of course, there also recycling comes in, because obviously you need to collect, but you also need to recycle it. And for that to happen, you need to have targets for recycled content. And it's very important that you have quite ambitious level of collection targets. So I would say, yes, these are the key things.
00:48:05
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting to also go through the press release from Zero Waste Europe and I was actually reading through what you talked about and I think this is a good segue because you brought up the mixed sorting and because I think the European Parliament has not made it mandatory.
00:48:23
Speaker
for countries to adopt mixed waste sorting. And it sort of got me thinking because even within the Netherlands, which is where I'm based out of, different municipalities have different ways in which they classify waste. And then they say, in these yellow color boxes of bins, you can put in plastic waste. And then you may have dry waste, wet waste. But if you look at Rotterdam, for example, you don't have that. You just have everything else. And then you have cotton and glass.
00:48:53
Speaker
How do you see municipalities, not just in Europe, but even in other places where they are looking at this waste problem? How can they sort of maximize this sorting efficiency when it comes to collecting waste? Should they go for a centralized approach with waste collection?
00:49:11
Speaker
Consumers don't have to sort waste and then in a centralized location, it's sorted and then it goes to recycling and other applicable facilities downstream. Or do you see it trickling down more towards the consumer side where consumers have to be thought or made aware of, okay, this is how you should actually be sorting waste to minimize waste being left untreated, for example.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yes, well this is very interesting and it's very also sometimes controversial, the discussion, let's say so. In fact, we are big promoters of separate collection and it always has to be the priority in our opinion.
00:49:56
Speaker
and the best way of doing it is to have torture collection and in combination with DRS, which is mostly for the beverages, but it could be also extended to some other types of packaging. This gives the highest level of collection rates, but unfortunately,
00:50:22
Speaker
Unfortunately, any type of separate collection is not perfect, so we added another element which is how to also
Challenges in Waste Collection and Packaging Waste
00:50:34
Speaker
sort out the materials that are not captured by separate collection materials that end up in so-called mixed waste stream.
00:50:43
Speaker
Unfortunately, it's quite a big amount of materials that still end up, because it's difficult. Not everybody participates in separate collections. I live in Brussels, for example, now for the last eight years, and you see a lot of
00:51:01
Speaker
recycler materials that are thrown into bins, in the wrong bins or in the bins which are directly sent to incinerators. And if you look at this data across Europe, it's very high actually in terms of particular plastics. A lot of plastics, let's say half of the plastics ends up not separately collected.
00:51:24
Speaker
And these materials are currently, it's just either landfill or incinerator, mostly incinerator. So it's a big loss. So I want to maybe touch on something that you mentioned earlier, and that's this question of recycling versus bio-based. I'm going to read a quote. We were particularly disappointed that the recycled content targets for sensitive packaging have been reduced.
00:51:52
Speaker
And today's vote would allow the use of biobased plastics and packaging only as a way to dilute the targets for recycled content. That was a quote from someone very upset. And I think it's someone who you probably don't agree with that much. And that was from, of course, Plastics Europe, a large plastics organization. They obviously want to prioritize recycling as the key target.
00:52:18
Speaker
I guess, though, in this sort of bio-based versus recycling versus other sorts of waste management, we talked about this idea of the waste hierarchy and recycling kind of being at a lower point of it, but in some cases, it being allowed to supersede reuse in some of the legislative aspects here. There's this tension. I think that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest picture,
00:52:45
Speaker
Climate change and carbon emissions are probably the biggest sustainability challenge facing the world today. But the reality is that the carbon footprint of an individual piece of plastic packaging is extremely minimal. It's just not... When you think about where carbon emissions come from, plastic packaging, especially on a unit basis, just really isn't one of them. It's just not... Obviously, cumulatively, it's a big footprint, but
00:53:12
Speaker
There's, I think, a very legitimate case that the burden of waste management produces more emissions, whether it's through things like incineration or just the logistics associated with these pieces of plastic packaging than ultimately the actual carbon footprint of the material itself. So you have this tension where I think globally we really want to tackle
00:53:37
Speaker
this issue of carbon footprint, but in plastics, it seems like we're giving waste a higher priority. And then you have these things like, oh, we need to put biobased into plastics. And it's like, well,
00:53:46
Speaker
What are we prioritizing here and why? So I guess I'm just curious, at a high level, for your read on this challenge of how we should be thinking about prioritizing carbon emissions and plastic waste. And then also on the specific substitution concept that's been put forward in the PPWR, how you're thinking about that.
00:54:09
Speaker
you know, if you're going to team up with plastics, you're up to put out a joint statement calling for this to be reversed or whatever.
00:54:20
Speaker
In fact, actually, we did agree on this particular issue with them. What we want to have is to have specific targets for the materials, recycled content for the fossil-based materials separated from targets for the bio-based. And again, the reason for that is that we do want that those fossil materials are recycled.
00:54:51
Speaker
And it should not lead to that pyrobase somehow starts undermining the targets for recycling those fossil materials. But in our overall strategy, again, when I mentioned the carbon pressure for plastics, we realized that when it comes to after the reduction and reuse,
00:55:15
Speaker
50% should be fossil-based and then another 50% in the long term should come from bio-based plastics. We're still trying to figure out exactly what kind of feedstocks should be used for that.
00:55:30
Speaker
because I think it's a difficult issue. It's not clear where exactly it should come from, but it does look like it could be more sustainable. Again, coming from back to the package interacting, we did agree with plastic syrup on this issue. We wanted to have separate targets.
00:55:56
Speaker
I wanted to kind of pull back and say, you know, looking at everything we've talked about, we have these ambitious goals, whether it's 90% collection, you know, any of the recycling targets. I guess, you know, do you think that we're on track? Are we doing enough to meet those goals? And where do you see things, you know, five years from now, if we, or maybe even a year from now, if we get you back on the podcast? I'm just curious, as you think the progress that we're going to make, and are we making it fast enough?
00:56:27
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, I think our press release said that this legislation did not have the change that we expected for the time. For the reasons that it didn't really address the issue of reduction and reuse, because it's not enough that we just start recycling more. Recycling doesn't at all address the issue of
00:56:57
Speaker
of waste generation. In fact, none of the recycling systems are perfect. So I don't think it actually gives us the tools to address the problem that we have, the ever-growing waste generation. And it's very interesting, the recent Eurostat data on packaging, it really shows that packaging waste is growing and growing.
00:57:25
Speaker
And most of the packaging nowadays is paper packaging. And only then, plastics are actually quite behind. So we are seeing this switch to paper packaging. But unfortunately, particularly when it comes to food contact materials, it doesn't get recycled at all. So it ends up disposed.
00:57:49
Speaker
The paper point is an interesting one there. As I think you know, at Lux, we work with a lot of companies in industry, both consumer packaged goods and the chemicals companies, plastic companies that are producing a lot of these raw materials. If you were to advise them, what do you think that those... I mean, obviously you'd like them to be focusing on their sustainability initiatives and all of that, but what do you think
00:58:18
Speaker
you know, they still are trying to find viable businesses. What would your advice or recommendation to them be about how they can, you know, try to align themselves better to where the circular economy, the plastics economy is going or should be going? You mean, particularly for plastics?
00:58:40
Speaker
Yeah, particularly for, well, for, for, for waste, I guess, in general, but plastic is kind of wasting. I mean, if the message is get out of plastics, you know, that that's a, that's a fine message too. But like you mentioned, there are challenges with other materials. So yeah, it's a good question. What would you advise there? Yeah, I, for us, it's very, very clear when, I mean, our, our focus is on real. So get out of,
00:59:07
Speaker
single-use, particularly packaging. I'm not talking about automobile and some other types of plastics and other materials, but for the packaging, I think there is a really strong case for moving towards reuse. There's a lot happening in
00:59:26
Speaker
particularly in Europe. I don't know how the situation in the US, but especially after the Singulus plastics directive, there was a lot of movement happening.
00:59:38
Speaker
And then it, I must say that, you know, there was a lot of really initiatives happening in Europe. And then it kind of like little paralyzed. So we were really hoping that the package interactive will give the right incentive now to even kind of like to give this impetus for the industry and the companies to continue doing that.
00:59:59
Speaker
Unfortunately, it became a little bit watered down. So I really strongly encourage to look into the reuse in the long term. It's actually a good business. I think our reports, it's not only better for climate, but it's also good in terms of money.
01:00:20
Speaker
And of course, the only problem is that you have this upfront cost. But I mean, anybody who's smart knows that, you know, money is not made in one year, in two years. It's always done in the long term. So that's my recommendation. And yeah, let's just move away from, you know, disposable things.
01:00:45
Speaker
I get all my grapes individually wrapped. We'll have a discussion. I think the hardest sell, those of us with kids, I think know that it can be a hard sell sometimes.
01:00:59
Speaker
They really love their individual yogurt packs, or at least my daughter does. But Janek, I want to thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. You know, Lux, we may be doing our next event in Brussels, so maybe we can see you there and certainly have some good discussions on this topic as well. But yeah, I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your insights with us. It's really fantastic.
01:01:25
Speaker
And thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Mike and Karik. Thank you for having and having this discussion and let's stay in touch.
01:01:36
Speaker
Innovation Matters is a production of Lux Research, the leading sustainable innovation research and advisory firm. You can follow this podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want more, check out www.luxresearchinc.com slash blog for all of the latest news, opinions, and articles.