Kicking the plastic habit

Is Britain drowning in plastic?
We certainly get through a lot: 20 times more than we did 50 years ago and roughly double the amount in 1993. British shoppers use two million tonnes of plastic packaging each year: that's 33kg per head. But weight isn't the whole story. Plastic is increasingly visible in our lives because it keeps getting better (and lighter) at what it does: yoghurt pots, water bottles, detergent tubs all weigh less now than ten years ago, so far more goods are wrapped in plastic than the increase in weight suggests. According to Incpen, an industry group that studies plastic and the environment, 53 per cent of consumer goods are now wrapped in plastic, yet plastic accounts for only 20 per cent of packaging by weight.

Then isn't plastic packaging a good thing overall?
That's what the UK's £10bn packaging industry likes to say. In developing countries, up to 40 per cent of food is lost before it can be sold: in Britain, thanks to advanced packaging, that sort of waste is limited to about 3 per cent. And while all packaging materials have their merits, plastic has more. There are over 20 types of polymer (the long chains of molecules that make up plastic) used in packaging, enabling packagers to seek strength, heat-resistance and breathable properties and blend them to make the right wrapping. Above all, it's light, so it's easy and cheap to transport, and relatively environmentally friendly. A recent Austrian study concluded that if we were to cease using plastic, packaging of other types would have to increase by 400 per cent to make up for it.

So what's not to like?
Plastic comes from oil - a black mark in itself. But manufacturers argue that plastic packaging accounts for only 2 per cent of world oil consumption and that that is an excellent return for chemicals which would otherwise be burned. The making of plastic, they note, requires less energy (and water) than rival materials, like paper. The real problem with plastic is when it reaches the end of its life, or rather, when it doesn't. Since it won't biodegrade, it can become permanent, troublesome clutter, fouling the landscape and harming birds and sealife. According to the Marine Conservation Society, plastic litter on Britain's beaches has increased by 126 per cent since 1994 and 170 marine species including whales, seals and turtles are known to ingest it. In 2002, a dead minke whale was found in France with 1kg of plastic bags inside it. In March, the BBC reported that every single one of two million albatrosses breeding on the Midway Islands in the Pacific is thought to have swallowed plastic.

But can't we recycle the stuff?
We can, and under the EU Packaging Directive, we have to. By the end of 2008, Britain must be recycling 60 per cent of all packaging (paper, metal, glass, the lot) and 22.5 per cent of plastic packaging. And almost entirely thanks to intensive recycling of plastic bottles and the thick plastic sheets or films used by businesses, we're on track to meet the latter target. Half of all local councils now collect plastic bottles and their recycling rate has risen from 3 per cent to 35 per cent since 2001. Bottles and films get recycled because they're easy to sort and typically made of a single polymer: PET for clear bottles, LDPE for films.

Why don't we recycle more?
Theoretically all plastics are recyclable, but in the case of 'mixed plastics'- juice cartons, for example - where several polymers are combined in a single piece of packaging, it's currently impractical: separating the polymers is energy-intensive and often just as complex as making the packaging in the first place. But there's also a strong bureaucratic incentive for the 465 local authorities dealing with the problem to keep dumping plastic in landfill. Their priority is to divert 75 per cent of biodegradable waste from landfill sites: under the EU Landfill Directive, they'll get heavily fined if they don't. But plastics aren't biodegradable, so there are no penalties for sending it to landfill.

Who processes the stuff that is recycled?
Britain has a few reprocessing plants, but most of the plastic waste we recycle (67 per cent) is in fact exported - to China. China has both the demand for raw materials and the manpower to sort plastic waste and reprocess it into a range of products (clothing, garden furniture, crash barriers) that the UK doesn't. Reprocessing in the UK has actually fallen by 20 per cent since 2004 as a result of the strong demand from Asia. British recyclers complain that it would be far more efficient and environmentally sound to develop our own recycling capacity, but that the high prices paid by China - up to £150 for a bale of mixed plastic bottles - is holding it back.

Do other EU countries deal with plastic the same way?
No. Britain is unusual both in its highly de-centralised waste policy and in its reliance on sending plastic rubbish halfway round the world. But in terms of the amount of plastic eventually reprocessed (ie. turned into new plastic products) we aren't so different from, say, Germany or Sweden, which have two of the best reprocessing rates in Europe (around 30 per cent compared with our 22.5 per cent). Where we do differ, markedly, is in our reluctance to burn plastic: British local councils dislike incineration. By contrast, those EU nations that send no more than a small portion of their plastic waste to landfill, burn most of it instead and generate energy from it in a process known as 'energy recovery'. The whole of London has just two such facilities and the plastics industry would like to see a lot more.

So where do we go from here?
Critics, from both industry and environmental groups, argue that there is currently no plan: that leaving waste to local government and packaging to the powerful supermarkets is folly. Nonetheless, there are promising new ideas about dealing with plastic waste (see below), but they do depend on our willingness to change our habits.

Is the future a 'closed loop'?
The key to making really big reductions in packaging has less to do with technology (eg. making a yoghurt pot so many grammes lighter) than with changes in behaviour and sorting. If you re-use a package ten times, then you've reduced packaging by 90 per cent. Supermarket suppliers made huge reductions in waste then they shifted from using disposable cardboard to re-usable plastic pallets, and similar gains could come from 'in-store vending' schemes, under which shoppers refill containers that they bring with them to the supermarket. At present we're all being urged not to use plastic bags: though in practical terms that's fairly pointless (plastic bags account for less than 1 per cent of landfill), it will have great symbolic value if it stops us thinking of packaging as quite so disposable.

Another promising avenue is 'closed loop' recycling. Today most plastic recycling involves plastics being mixed together and turned into lower-grade products, which cannot be used in food or other high-end packaging. Under closed loop recycling, however, plastic waste is carefully sorted and washed, so packagers can make the same quality of packaging out of recycled materials as they do out of virgin chemicals. Britain's first closed loop plant, dealing with plastic bottles, opens in Dagenham on 26 June. ·