PepsiCo axes TerraCycle chip pack recycling scheme as critics question project’s viability

12 Apr 2022 --- PepsiCo chip brand Walkers is ending its UK recycling scheme with TerraCycle. The waste management company launched the scheme in 2018 and collected millions of waste chip packets. However, industry experts have criticized the scheme for putting the onus on consumers to meticulously separate trash with no evidence of recycling success ever being made public.

PepsiCo maintains that its decision to end the scheme is solely due to advances in flexible plastic recycling infrastructure, saying: “When the scheme started, there were very limited options for recycling crisp packets. Over three years on, there are more than 3,500 flexible plastic collection points in supermarkets across the UK.” 

“Considering this progress, the Walkers Crisp Packet Recycling Scheme will close on 25 April 2022. Our scheme was always meant to be a short-term solution until more comprehensive options became available.”

PepsiCo Europe plans to eliminate virgin fossil-based plastic in all of its chip bags by 2030, using 100% recycled or renewable plastic instead. It has urged policymakers to deliver specific targets for flexible packaging to drive collection, sorting and recycling to help achieve this goal.

The food and beverage giant is one of several major companies supporting The Flexible Plastic Fund, a UK industry initiative launched last year to make flexible plastic recycling economically viable for recyclers and easier for consumers. The fund aims to give flexible plastic a stable value, increase recyclate supply and meet the UK Plastic Packaging Tax requirements. 

Flexible fallacies
TerraCycle is famed for its collection projects and recycling programs that stand as replacements for lacking public infrastructure, often using mail-back systems for used packaging and advanced methods to sort and recycle complex materials. 

Recycling flexible plastics is a major challenge for waste management companies.However, the company has faced increased public scrutiny over the past year after investigative journalists discovered around 30 bales of flexible plastic waste at an incineration site in Bulgaria in a documentary film titled The Recycling Myth. TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky told us this was a one-off human error that the filmmakers were sensationalizing. 

Speaking to PackagingInsights, a flexible plastic recycling insider, who wished to remain anonymous, says the end of the Walkers Crisp Packet recycling scheme “signifies positive advances in how producers work together to solve a shared problem, rather than launching their own schemes to gain brand advantage.” 

“Ultimately, TerraCycle’s model of brand-specific collection schemes proved to be flawed as it does not reflect how citizens dispose of waste. More holistic solutions, such as retailers’ collection points and curbside collection schemes, have proven to be a more efficient and effective solution to the issue,” they say. 

“The utilization of the TerraCycle collection points is understood to be very low with very little material having been collected – it is telling that there are no public figures. This is because only the most fastidious of home recyclers would separate crisp packets from other flexibles.” 

Exporting the problem 
Claims of significant infrastructural progress in flexible plastic recycling remain dubious. Currently, roughly 5% of all flexible plastic materials are ever recycled in the UK, and drop-off points established at supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been discovered to transport waste abroad to countries like Turkey. Industry insiders say TerraCycle has a very low collection rate and does not make its figures public.

A recent investigative report by Bloomberg saw trackers placed on an array of flexible waste items at Tesco drop-off points. One tracker disappeared in London. Others ended up in Poland and another at a domestic waste processing site in Turkey. 

Activists have been decrying the deportation of plastic waste to less-developed nations for years, highlighting the irony of the environmental footprint caused by international transportation and the damage caused by waste often dumped and burned in nations that lack the necessary recycling infrastructure. 

Greenpeace estimates roughly 40% of the UK’s entire plastic packaging waste was sent to Turkey in 2020, and usually incinerated or buried. Recently, reports emerged that hundreds of Turkish sites claiming to be recycling companies are using undocumented migrant labor and arsoning their facilities to destroy waste throughout the country cheaply.

Room for hope 
Despite Bloomberg’s discovery of supermarket collection points transporting waste to less-developed nations and the continuously low recycling rate for flexibles in the UK, the insider says there is room for hope, particularly as advanced recycling methods continue to spread. 

“There is plenty of material being collected already at supermarket return points,” they say. “This year will likely see further advances in sorting and end reprocessing. Advanced recycling will particularly continue to grow with the opening of new sites. A mixture of reprocessing solutions is needed to ensure the maximum value of the resource is retained.” 

By Louis Gore-Langton