“A who's who of companies investing in plastic production”: Is the Alliance to End Plastic Waste hypocritical?

23 Jan 2019 --- The newly-launched Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) reads like a “who’s who of companies investing in the expansion of plastic production,” which, considering the alliance’s goals, is ironic. This is according to research from the Dutch-Belgian environmental NGO Recycling Netwerk. The findings showed that many of the alliance’s 28 members have scheduled billion-dollar investments in the expansion of plastic production.

Procter & Gamble, BASF, DSM, Dow, Suez, the chemical divisions of Total, Shell and ExxonMobil, and 20 other multinationals are part of the alliance investing more than US$1.5 billion in the fight against plastic waste, through enhanced recycling infrastructure and plastic clean-up. 

The AEPW has four core areas of focus:

• Infrastructure: Developing waste management infrastructure and more recycling.
• Innovation: Innovation in recycling techniques for better recycling and thereby adding value to plastic waste.
• Education: Providing information to governments, businesses and communities to initiate action.
• Cleanup: The capture of stray plastic, especially in the Asian rivers that contribute to the plastic soup most.

“The alliance was launched with a huge marketing effort on Wednesday last week. The signatories claim to invest over a billion dollars to ‘end plastic waste.’ But an overview of pending investments in the expansion of plastic production quickly reveals the hypocrisy of the alliance. Without tackling the production of plastic at its source, all clean-up efforts will be in vain,” the Recycling Netwerk says.The total omission of plastic production considerations from the alliance’s agenda has – perhaps unsurprisingly – drawn criticisms.

A key point of the NGO’s research is that the alliance does not tackle the problem of plastic waste at its source. The production of plastic is reaching 400 million tons each year, it says, with 60 million metric tons produced in Europe alone. The signatories are likely to be at the center of plastic production in the next 10 years.

Shell has built a chemical plant in Pennsylvania, with the aim of using natural gas to make polyethylene plastic for the northern US, while Versalis invested US$142 million in a plastic-production plant in Mantova, Italy.

In November of last year, Saudi oil and chemical majors Aramco and Sabic signed an agreement to build one of the world’s largest oil-to-chemical facilities, valued at US$20 billion. In the same month, DSM announced it is in the process of expanding the capacity of its specialty polymers plants in Emmen and Geleen, the Netherlands. DSM Engineering Plastics cites strong customer demand in high-temperature polyamides (PAs) and thermoplastic copolyesters (TPC) with the expansion.

Earlier in 2019, Braskem announced plans to build the largest polypropylene (PP) production line in the Americas, committing up to US$675 million to the facility. Moreover, Berry Global also plans to invest US$70 million in plastic plant expansion.

Essentially, up to 2023, the US chemical industry will invest an amount of no less than US$164 billion in 264 new plastic factories. INEOS will spend 2.7 billion euros on building two factories in Antwerp, Belgium, that make plastic pellets from liquid gas that will be imported from the US. This is expected to increase plastic production by as much as 40 percent over the next ten years, which involves billions of extra turnover. This entirely outweighs the US$1 billion earmarked for the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, says the Plastic Soup Foundation in a statement.

A hypocritical alliance?
The total omission of plastic production considerations from the alliance’s agenda has – perhaps unsurprisingly – drawn criticisms. 

“This initiative distracts the attention from what is really at issue, namely the absolute reduction of single-use plastic. The words of the industry sound beautiful but are oh so hollow. Or shall I say, cheap,” says Maria Westerbos, Director of the Plastic Soup Foundation, a Netherlands based NGO.

Now that climate action and energy transition are putting the oil industry under pressure, the production of plastic is a lifeline that can deliver a considerable return for a series of oil giants, notes the Plastic Soup Foundation.

“This announcement from the industry is too little, too late,” says Dianna Cohen, CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition. “Plastic production is slated to increase by 40 percent over the next decade. Recycling fails to address the problem, and single-use plastic is filling our waterways, oceans and the environment. These global companies must take action to reduce single-use plastic production. We need to turn off the faucet.”

“As Captain Charles Moore has frequently said, without reduction, investment in recycling and clean-up is like bailing an overflowing bathtub with a teaspoon,” she adds.

Of course, recycling and reduction do play a significant role in cleaning up the world’s plastic, but there is a first and foremost need to focus on reduction and reuse, Juliet Phillips, Ocean Campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), tells PackagingInsights.

“Real solutions will require companies in the alliance to rethink their business models fundamentally. The world simply does not have the capacity to recycle the sheer volumes of plastics currently produced and consumed each day, as witnessed following China’s import ban. While cleanups have a role to play until the problem is addressed at the source by stemming the relentless flow of single-use plastics, we will always be playing an unwinnable game of catch-up,” she says.

“Much of the plastic flooding onto the market is avoidable and through substituting single-use packaging with reusable and refillable alternatives, companies could vastly reduce the quantities of plastic waste they produce,” she concludes. 

As pressure to manage the mammoth amounts of plastic waste in the environment increases, high-profile commitments and single-use plastics bans have been commonplace. In the UK food industry, for example, the UK Plastics Pact consists of more than 40 business that have pledged to eradicate single-use plastics. While major players such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and McDonalds – to name a few – have also committed to eradication goals. However, this alliance stands out as consisting of players across the plastics value chain, as well as its complete omission of plastics reduction from the agenda.

By Laxmi Haigh