Veolia ready to invest in recycled plastics, but demand must come first, says Veolia UK’s Technology Chief

13 Sep 2019 --- Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at Veolia UK & Ireland, Richard Kirkman, says that Veolia is ready and able to invest in the supply of recycled plastics, once the manufacturing demand is there. Speaking to PackagingInsights during Packaging Innovations 2019 in London this week, Kirkman expressed his support for the UK government’s waste management strategy, including a plastics tax that will help fuel demand for recycled content. In this interview, Kirkman also calls for more standardized use of packaging materials, especially in films, to help recycling efficiencies, and promotes the sometimes-forgotten environmental benefits of plastics.

What’s standing out to you on the Packaging Innovations show floor?
Kirkman: Given everything that is going on in the wider environment, I am hearing about how companies are working to make packaging more sustainable. The choice of material, design for recyclability and the impact of the UK government’s resource and waste management strategy – namely Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and the Plastics Tax – are all key discussions. I am listening out for pragmatic approaches to Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of packaging and its value. I also want to know what happens upstream from waste management, what are the trends, what materials will companies move to – for example, will they move from polystyrene? Will they use detectable pigments in black plastics?

How has the sustainability debate advanced?
Kirkman: The discussion has progressed a lot in the last 12 months – packaging designers are coming to the waste management side and trying to understand what happens to the material they use at end-of-life. This has been a recurring theme in the past 10 years but it does feel different now – manufacturers are considering sustainability at the core of their designs, rather than it being an afterthought. It’s being taken seriously.

Manufacturers are required to use more recycled plastics. Can Veolia supply it?
Kirkman: It’s a demand-led industry, so we do not produce more than we are asked to make. There’s a bit of mythology around “there’s not enough capacity.” When there was a tax imposed on landfill, people started building recycling centers and it is the same with rPET – Veolia will not just make it on the off chance that someone might use it, but if we can see that people will use it because of the regulatory changes, then we will invest the hundreds of millions in the packaging plants to produce the feedstock.

Will the UK Plastics Tax help fuel the demand?
Kirkman: I think it will. The day that it was announced we immediately had people knocking on our door asking “have we got any supply?” Before that it didn’t happen, but the announcement of the plastics tax alone has already started to move people.

What advice would you give to the government as it implements its waste management strategies?
Kirkman: They are well thought-out and balanced proposals. Every individual stakeholder base has some sort of complaint with them, whether you are a local authority, manufacture or waste company, but it is most important that we move to implement something. The DRS should be a simple on-the-go system rather than an all-in because it is simpler and we already have a lot of household collection. EPR needs to be relatively free from of bureaucracy and admin, otherwise there will a lot of extra costs attached to it. Overall, the advice is simplicity at the expense of some accuracy. It will not be perfect but it is important that people can at least understand what it is trying to achieve.

How can packaging suppliers help Veolia to recycle more effectively?
Kirkman: The most important thing is to act together and, while it may seem contrary to innovation and competitiveness, we think there needs to be some alignment between the large brands and the packagers to deliver consistency in terms of material types. Packaging can still have different size and shapes, but there needs to be some convergence of material use to improve recycling efficiencies.

Which materials are particularly difficult to recycle?
Kirkman: The recycling of films is very low because so many of them are different. There could be some alignment in which type of film is used – it is a big opportunity. There are also lots of different types of bottles but they all tend to be recyclable – it is more of a collection issue than a design issue. Meanwhile, probably a third to a half of pots, tubs and trays are made in such a way that they can be recycled.

Is there a danger that the rising tide of anti-plastic sentiment will overshadow the positive aspects of the material?
Kirkman: Yes, there is a danger, but I think this has improved over the last 12 months. When the BBC’s Blue Planet came out, the public perception of plastics was hugely negative, but some people are again understanding that we need plastics for the convenience, lightweighting, energy savings and food safety. There is definitely a need to re-promote the benefits to the public.

How concerned are you by microplastics in the environment?
Kirkman: It is something Veolia looks at. The assessment we have done is that if we used a different material to plastics in the last 20 years across all applications, the global emissions of carbon would have been much greater and increased global temperatures by a few degrees. It hasn’t been possible for us to build our world without plastics, they have been an important part of our growth. Now that we are more aware of microplastics, we should try to remove them and recycle plastics to keep them out of the ocean, but it doesn’t mean we have done the wrong thing by using plastics in the first place. If plastic packaging was invented today it would be the environmental breakthrough of the universe. Once upon a time, if you told someone that the plastic bag is 10 times lighter than anything else, has the lowest carbon impact, can be reused 100 times and it never deteriorates, somebody would think you are a magician.

What role do you see for bioplastics in a more sustainable future?
Kirkman: Bioplastic from a bio-source doesn’t make any difference to us as recyclers, it’s more a case of whether we have enough crops to divert to biosource. If we were to switch wholesale, I’m not sure it is ultimately better than using oil.

What are some of Veolia’s recent waste management projects in the UK?
Kirkman: We have just invested in a large HDPE recycling facility in east London which recycles 300 million milk bottles a year. We are also looking at creating a PET recycling facility in the Midlands, which would recycle about 600 million drinks bottles a year. We also have a new service product called ProCycle which collects separately some of the more difficult streams like bottle tops, wrappers and films. The ProCycle service collects these streams from office and public buildings and turns them back into feedstock for new packaging.

What is Veolia’s global footprint?
Kirkman: Veolia consists of 10 global operations, all about US$2 billion turnover in size with about 15-20,000 employees, so we are a US$20billion company overall with around 200,000 employees. Veolia provides waste collection, water cleaning and renewable energy across all these 10 global zones.

By Joshua Poole