Renewable plastic (chapter 6)

The inquiry’s proposal: That the government instructs Ecola-belling Sweden to investigate the prerequisite for a laEcola-belling of plastic products containing bio-based raw materials.

Climate compensation fee

The inquiry’s proposal: That the government investigates the possibility to introduce a climate compensation fee on the sale of fossil plastic. Such a system ought to be technically neutral and can advantageously be introduced in steps so that it will, within a certain time-horizon, include all products.

Mass balance for bio-based plastic

The inquiry’s proposal: That the government support companies in the effort with creating an acceptance for mass balance calcu-lation for bio-based and/or recycled plastic raw material.

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Efforts on research and development

Recommendations for public and private actors:

To enhance the prerequisites for renewable plastic and increase its share on the market, research and development efforts are required.

Various actors need to be involved and collaborate – chemical and forestry companies, the agricultural sector, academies and universities, authorities and so on. Research efforts for renewable plastic should also be carried out parallel with those efforts that are being made to improve upon recycling.

For instance, the inquiry sees the demand for a mapping of plastic raw materials that considers any targets concerning how much bio-based plastic that society wants to see and that includes competing uses and land use. Furthermore, the inquiry notes that background data for the various bio-based raw materials, which are required to conduct a lifecycle analysis, are in many cases insufficient.

To study the possibilities of using plastic based on residues from e.g. forestry and/or forest industry would be interesting since there exists a concern that the bio-based raw material that is currently being used primarily derives from the agricultural sector and therefore risks, in the long-term, to compete with food production.

2 Chapter 2 – The plastic community

2.1 Underlying fact

The global production of plastic is expected to double within the next twenty years (World Economic Forum et al, 2016) with the current annual production amounting to 335 million tons of plastic, where Europe produces 60 million tons of the total (PlasticsEurope, 2017).

An important aspect of this accelerated increase is society’s shift from using reusable products to disposables, especially for packaging pro-ducts. As a result, a significant increase in plastic waste has occurred during the last decades. Since plastic is extremely difficult to break down, plastic waste is accumulated in nature and especially in the World’s oceans. Currently, an estimate of over 150 million tons of plastic waste exists in the oceans. Without drastic action, there is a pos-sibility that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050 (World Economic Forum et al, 2016).

In 2016, the demand for plastic in Europe was 50 million tons per year with 40 percent used for packaging, 20 percent for construction materials, 10 percent for the car industry, 6 percent for electronics, 4 percent for consumer goods and 3 percent for agriculture (Plastics-Europe, 2017). The amount of plastic waste was estimated to approx-imately 6 300 million tons where 9 percent was recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent was accumulated in landfills or in the natural environment. This means that with the same rate of produc-tion and waste generaproduc-tion, there will be roughly 12 000 million tons of plastic waste and rubbish in landfills and the environment by 2050 (Geyer et al, 2015).

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The legal border between waste and a product

How the chemical legislation ought to be applied for recycled material compared to new raw material is an ongoing and disputed question.

The recyclers often consider that material that has been recycled should no longer be considered as waste, but rather as a chemical product that consequently falls under the EU’s chemical legislation Reach (1907/2006). However, with the absence of End of Waste cri-teria for plastic this is no obvious conclusion, especially if it concerns material where there is a lack of knowledge concerning the content (Kemikalieinspektionen¹, 2014). The EU Commission has identified four areas that are critical concerning how chemical and waste leg-islations operate together:

1. Information about the presence of undesired substances is not easily accessible for waste handlers and recyclers.

2. Waste may contain substances that are no longer allowed in new products.

3. EU’s rules concerning end of waste is not completely harmonised, which creates uncertainties regarding how waste becomes a new material and product.

4. Rules for deciding what waste and chemicals that are hazardous is not well-adapted, which affects secondary raw materials.

2.2 How the plastic waste is handled

Plastic waste in Sweden has since 2010 remained at a relatively con-stant level of approximately 300 000 tons annually (SMED, 2012;

Naturvårdsverket², 2018). About 220 000 tons of this annual total derives from households while the remaining 80 000 tons originates from other operations. A mere 16 percent of the plastic waste become new materials according to a study by Material Economics and Åter-vinningsindustrierna (The Swedish Recycling Industries’ Associa-tion), which corresponds to 11 percent of the total usage of plastic (Material Economics, 2018). This low figure is a result of a large por-tion of the plastic waste, which is gathered for recycling, ending up

1 The Swedish Chemical Agency.

2 The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

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in incineration or being used for energy recovery during the sorting or at a later stage of the recycling process.

Problems and prerequisites for recycling varies depending on pro-duct area. Therefore, it is important to look over the prerequisites for different product types, as well as different plastic materials, to in-crease recycling.

Packaging

The largest use of plastic is for packaging (PlasticsEurope, 2017).

Packaging has a rapid turnover, which means that it also makes up a large part of the plastic waste. According to the Environmental Pro-tection Agency (2018), 47 percent of the plastic from packaging was collected for recycling on the Swedish market in 2016. The majority however, went towards energy recovery and only approximately 25 percent was recycled into new plastic raw materials.

In Sweden, the packaging from households, and from some mu-nicipalities with proximity to the property collection, are collected through the Förpacknings- och Tidningsinsamlingen (a nationwide system for recycling in Sweden using recycling stations). The govern-ment decided in June of 2018 on regulation changes concerning the producer responsibility for packaging, which aims for more uncom-plicated and accessible collection systems for the households. This should clarify that the general rule for collection is that is done close to the property or in the neighbourhood.

Initiatives are also taken from several different angles to increase the amounts of plastic packaging that are recycled. One example is the Swedish Food Retailers Federation’s Roadmap with the target that all plastic packaging should be manufactured using renewable or recycled materials by 2030. However, there are only a handful of packaging made from recycled plastic that currently come into direct contact with food. According to the EU’s regulation on good manu-facturing practice for materials and articles intended to come into contact with food (EC No. 2023/2006), plastic that is intended to come into contact with food must be recycled according to the EU Commission’s approved processes. PET-bottles are one example of plastic products that can be manufactured completely from recycled material.

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Although previous research demonstrates that packaging does not often contain hazardous substances (Sternbeck et al, 2016), a new European study has shown the opposite (Groh et al, 2018). Approx-imately 15 percent of the chemicals that were identified as likely to be present in plastic packaging were hazardous for the environment or for human health. A harmonised toxicity classification was missing for many of the other chemicals. The results indicate a lack of infor-mation within the substances usage and presence in products, in-cluding those that are in direct contact with food.

The construction sector

According to the EU’s Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EG), at least seventy percent of construction and demolition waste shall be recycled by 2020 at the latest. Plastic however, is a light material that is often hidden behind the heavier materials in the statistics. This means that a focus on sorting the plastic is uncommon. Statistics from 2012 shows that the amount of unsorted plastic waste within the construction and demolition sector in Sweden is approximately 43 000 tons annually (waste that falls under the fraction flammable is not included in the statistics) of which only approximately 900 tons is sorted out for recycling (SMED, 2012). Statistics from 2016 shows an increase of approximately 60 000 tons in the amount of unsorted plastic waste within the construction and demolition sector (Avfall Sverige, 2016; SCB, 2014). Material Economics (2018) estimates that the demolition waste contains primarily PVC (45 percent) and PS and PE (25 percent each).

For waste that derives from the construction sector, it is important to distinguish in what building phase the waste originates. The con-tent of construction waste, such as installation waste or waste that originates during renovations, is often considered to be known. There exist good prerequisites to knowing the information concerning the quality, properties, plastic material and chemical content during pro-duction and installation. This means that the disposal of these mate-rials should be able to increase. A lot of plastic waste on construction sites originates from the packaging that the products arrive in. For instance, stretch film and shrink wrap that is primarily made from PE (LPDE). These can be recycled (Carlsson, 2002). However, few

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construction sites have the necessary sorting systems in place. There are some good examples though of systems for the recovery of installation waste, e.g. the Swedish Flooring Trade Association’s GBR floor recycling and the Nordic Plastic Group’s efforts with the collection of plastic tube waste from new construction or old tubes from renovation or demolition.

Repipe, a research project from 2017, demonstrates how a collab-oration along the supply-chain can take care of waste from the installation of tubes and thus increase the recycling. During the pro-ject, actors from along the whole supply-chain were involved and three challenges for a circular system for the tubes were identified;

(1) incentives and convenience for the collection of installation waste on the construction site, (2) transportation costs and (3) the quality of the granulate that derives from the recycler.

Concerning demolition waste, the situation is quite different. The long life-span risks that the plastic demolition waste contains un-desired and currently regulated substances. The Swedish Construc-tion FederaConstruc-tion estimates that the best way of handling plastic demo-lition waste is through energy recovery. The reason for this is the lack of traceability of materials in older buildings. Information on what substances the old buildings contain is lacking and the previous plastic materials that were being used may today be established as being hazardous for environmental and human health. Contemporary recycling techniques may therefore not be suitable for these types of plastic (Hedberg, 2018). At the same time, different projects at Chalmers University of Technology show that too broad conclusions should not be drawn concerning plastic waste. For example, it is not possible to recycle plastics that contains flame retardants. This may be applied to a limited section of the plastic parts while several of the other parts are suitable for recycling (Liljestrand, 2018). The Norwegian Climate and Pollution Agency has also published a study that showcases that it is possible to separate the hazardous brominated flame retardant (Strååt & Nilsson, 2018).

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Vehicles

Cars and other vehicles are largely comprised of plastic and new cars tend to contain even more plastic (Stenmarck et al, 2018). The most common materials are PP and PE (40 percent), but the car industry also contains more special plastics, such as ABS, PA and PMMA (Material Economics, 2018). The car manufacturers have several obli-gations concerning producer responsibility according to the Swedish Regulation (2007:185) on producer responsibility for cars. In accor-dance with the regulation, the producer is responsible for ensuring that at least 95 percent of the car’s weight is reused or recycled as of 2015 the latest. Of this, at least 85 percent of the car’s weight shall be comprised of reused or recycled material. The greatest challenge is above all to increase the recycling of non-metallic materials where plastic represents the largest amount. A higher recycling could be achieved by dismantling the car parts before fragmentation. Currently in Sweden, hardly any dismantling of plastic parts occurs prior to recycling.

The research project Realize, financed through Mistra Closing the Loop, has examined the prerequisite for an increased (manual) dis-mantling of plastic parts (Cullbrand et al, 2015). The project reached the conclusion that it is primarily due to economic reasons that manual dismantling currently does not occur to a greater extent. Another finding was that more effective packaging of materials is necessary.

The research continues in the project Explore with the aim of further analysing the change in the future vehicle fleets’ material content and the adaptation of the recycling system that is required (Ljungkvist Nordin, 2018).

Electronics

Producer responsibility for electronics has existed in Sweden since 2001.

This is nowadays regulated through the WEEE directive (2012/19/EU), which was implemented in Sweden through the regulation of producer responsibility for electronics (2014:1075). According to the require-ments, it is the producer’s responsibility to, among other things, manage the waste and design the product so that recycling and reuse is encouraged. In 2018, the changes in the regulation will enter in to effect. For instance, the categories that electronics are divided into

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will change and the producer responsibility will cover more types of electronics. Electronics are also regulated by the RoHs directive (2011/65/EU), which limits some hazardous substances that may occur in electronics and therefore also plastic in electronics.

There exist two collection systems for electronics in Sweden. El-kretsen, which collaborates with the municipalities for collection through recycling stations and in stores, and Recipo’s system of re-turning electronics in selected stores. The electronics sector in Sweden accounted for approximately 34 000 tons of plastic waste in 2010 where 50 percent was recycled, 35 percent used for energy recovery, 10 per-cent went to landfills and 5 perper-cent was incinerated (Fråne et al, 2012).

Society’s consumption of electronics has grown significantly since then and during 2017, approximately 66 000 tons of plastic waste from electronics was collected (Hasselström et al, 2018).

Plastic from agriculture

For agriculture in Sweden, there is a voluntary collection system for different plastic products, e.g. silage film, created by the non-profit industry association Svensk Ensilageplast Retur AB. Their goal is that 70 percent of agricultural plastic will be collected and that at least 30 percent of the collected plastic shall be recycled. The work is non-profit and financed by a fee that corresponds to the actual costs. Of the approximately 20 000 tons that was put on the market, 17 000 tons was collected where 12 000 was silage film (Stenmarck et al, 2018).

Plastic from healthcare

A large amount of plastic disposables are being used within the health-care sector in Sweden. There exists no producer responsibility on these products and recyclability is further complicated by the risk of contamination from pathogens. The plastic waste from healthcare is currently being sent to incineration, but the RE:Source project Håll-bar hantering av plastavfall från sjukhus (Sustainable management of plastic waste from hospitals) is examining the possibility to handle the plastic waste in a different way. It was uncovered that other countries use methods to render the waste harmless, e.g. by autoclaving and through ozone (Yarahmadi, 2018).

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Production Waste

Several manufacturers attempt to handle waste that derives from pro-duction and reintroduce it, where it is possible, into the manufac-turing process. Nevertheless, challenges that hinders the recycling still exists. For instance, reprocessing of the waste may be necessary but the correct equipment may not be available on site. Chalmers Uni-versity of Technology is running a project, Cirkumat, which examines how one may ease the recycling of production waste. A collection system for 3D filament, which enables the user of a 3D printer to resend the waste to the filament manufacturer, has been developed.

The manufacturer utilises the returned waste to manufacture new filament. In contrast to the large volumes and numerous actors that are commonly required in more traditional collection systems, this system uses a shorter path where the customers often receive return packaging and instructions for how to return the product.

2.3 Treatment of plastic waste and its environmental impact

PlasticsEurope (2017) estimates that approximately 27,1 million tons of plastic waste from consumers in Europe was collected in 2016 through official collection systems. The most common methods of waste treat-ment were energy recovery, recycling and landfill. For Sweden, most of the plastic waste is used for energy recovery (including plastic that is collected in mixed fractions) while the amount that is sent to landfill is among the lowest in Europe (PlasticsEurope, 2017).

Plastic has a large energy content, which means that the waste is suitable for use as fuel in district heating. Energy recovery from plastic results in fossil carbon dioxide emissions to the air, but also emissions in the form of sulphur dioxide, dust and nitrogen oxides as well as the production of ash that requires waste treatment (Stockholms stad, 2017). Energy recovery from plastic is an effective way of destroying undesired additives in the plastic and preventing them from spreading to the environment.

The negative environmental impacts from mechanical recycling of plastic is often due to the high temperature that is required during the reprocessing where heavy metals, volatile organic pollutants, phthalates, PAHs as well as dioxins and furans may be released

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(Hahladakisa et al, 2018). At the same time, recycled plastic reduces the use of brand-new plastic and thus yields some environmental benefits (Stenmarck et al, 2018). Obstacles to mechanical recycling of plastic include the cheap cost of plastic raw materials (oil), the pro-blem with pollutants in the collected waste material from plastics, the technical challenges concerning the separation of different types of plastic, the harmful additives in some plastics, and the challenge of finding cost-effective transportation (OECD, 2018a).

Another kind of recycling of plastic is feedstock recycling. Feed-stock recycling means that the long polymer chains, which plastic is made of, is broken down into its principle parts. The parts can, for example, be used to manufacture new plastic or as raw material for other chemical industries (Richards et al, 2018). This type of recy-cling is often energy demanding and needs various solvents. The environmental benefit depends on what the feedstock product is replacing.

Approximately 27 percent of the collected plastic waste in Europe is sent to landfills (PlasticsEurope, 2017). Sweden has introduced a ban against sending organic and flammable materials to landfills.

Despite the landfill ban, waste can still, according to the terms in the regulation (2001:512) concerning landfill of waste, be permitted to be sent to landfills in certain cases (Magnusson et al, 2016). The know-ledge surrounding what happens to the plastic in landfills is limited (Adamcová & Vaverková, 2016).

3 Chapter 4 – A smarter use

3.1 Proposal for a smarter use of plastic

The inquiry would like to highlight several areas where we can see development potential for waste preventing efforts as well as pro-longed lifecycles. Different actors can act in different ways:

The inquiry would like to highlight several areas where we can see development potential for waste preventing efforts as well as pro-longed lifecycles. Different actors can act in different ways: