INSIGHT: Riding the wave of ocean-bound plastic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the biggest global disrupters of a generation. As well as the devastating human impact, the outbreak saw businesses fold, economies shrink, and the world forced into waves of lockdowns.

The petrochemical industry did not escape the impact of the virus; oil prices dropped and rebounded, consumer demand patterns changed, and global supply chains were thrown into disarray.

Despite the chaos, some pre-COVID-19 topics are coming back to the fore in the petchems space, one of which is sustainability.

Initially side-lined by some at the beginning of the outbreak as demand for single-use plastics for hygiene reasons grew, and some converters chose lower-priced, fossil fuel-derived virgin polymers over higher-priced and less-available recycled materials, sustainability targets are once again getting serious attention from the industry.

Within this sector, ocean-bound plastic (OBP) – plastic waste within 60km of a coastline or waterway and at risk of entering the ocean – is gaining small but significant traction within the packaging sector, particularly from those in the recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) market.

Now, major European retailers such as Lidl are investing in the sector, winning the UK Retail Industry Awards’ ‘Sustainable Initiative of the Year 2020’ for its use of Bantam International’s Prevented Ocean Plastic (POP) across 13 of its fresh fish products in the UK. Bantam is one of a growing number of companies supplying OBP globally.

RISING INTEREST
The appetite for OBP is growing. By incorporating OBP into products and packaging, companies are not only helping support the communities of informal collectors and sorters who are most impacted by plastic waste, they are also sourcing quality material at comparable prices to European R-PET flake.

Retailers such as Sainsbury’s are now incorporating POP in their products, as well as firms like Child’s Farm, a UK-based cosmetics company specialising in natural skincare products for children.

So why ocean-bound plastic? Louise Norman, Sustainability Officer at Child’s Farm told ICIS that the company came across OBP in a drive to increase its use of recycled content. The company had reached 30% recycled content in its high density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles three years ago, but wanted to move to 100% recycled content because it feels strongly that it is the right thing to do. It looked at R-PET as an alternative.

“We couldn’t find the HDPE supply, so we looked at R-PET. We saw various grades, but [one of our converters] came to us with OBP”, Norman said. Child’s Farm uses Bantam’s POP.

Norman said that other recycled materials had a greyish tint, which the company would happily attribute to using 100% recycled content – a message that fits in with Child’s Farm’s overall sustainability goals. But OBP comes from post-consumer PET bottles, manually collected and sorted, with only a slight yellow tint.

The company buys the finished bottles from its supplier and acknowledges that, in the past, virgin PET had been noticeably cheaper. But, currently, POP comes in only “slightly more expensive” than PET, Norman said.

TEST AND TRACE
Most brands and retailers rely on the testing processes of their suppliers to ensure the packaging and products they use are suitable for purpose and meet the necessary safety and regulatory requirements. This was the case for UK retailer Sainsbury’s, which is incorporating POP into some of its packaging in the UK.

Ashwin Moorthy, Category Packaging Technology Manager at Sainsbury’s told ICIS: “We have a system within our business for collating packaging specifications from product suppliers… so we ensure our product supplier is doing the due diligence.”

In Sainsbury’s case, that supplier is Sharpak, part of Group Guillin, and which has been working with Bantam International for some time.

Sainsbury’s spent over a year working with both Sharpak and Bantam to ensure the OBP provided met its needs. The retailer spent time working with Sharpak to understand the supply chain, how the material met all relevant regulatory requirements such as REACH, and how it was certified as ocean-bound plastic – in this case via OceanCycle.

OceanCycle verifies material collected, the location, who collects it, and how and where it is sorted.

Raffi Schieir, Director, Bantam International said OceanCycle checks details such as the number of male to female informal collectors, if collection was taking place by individuals or in groups, and to ensure no child labour is used at any stage of the collection or sorting process.

OceanCycle is also open to inspection from both Sainsbury’s and Sharpak, Moorthy said.

Sainsbury’s requests that its product suppliers have checks and balances in place for all materials used. Through OceanCycle and Sharpak, Sainsbury’s can get complete ‘shore to store’ traceability on its POP.

Child’s Farm is used to traceability due to work with different cosmetics raw materials, such as coconut oil. Carrying out audits and ensuring traceability is hard and a risk, but if companies avoid working with communities because of that risk, then you end up not helping them at all, Norman said.

INVESTMENT NEEDED
Bantam recently celebrated its 20,000th tonne of fully-traceable POP being placed onto the market, but the volumes of OBP currently available remain small, and investment is needed to help the sector grow.

Both Child’s Farm and Sainsbury’s are able to source a consistent tonnage of OBP, but growth requires take-up from the industry and sharing best practice, Moorthy said.

There is also the worry that firms only use OBP as a marketing tool.

“My concern is if this becomes a tick box for consumers – having the [Prevented Ocean Plastic] logo [on products] rather than supporting the organisations who supply the plastic,” Norman said.

With more investment in the industry, it should also help to keep costs at competitive levels, improving infrastructure and logistics.

If more businesses galvanise behind OBP, and are able to help establish it as an additional and sustainable source of recycled material next to existing supply, this will help bring costs more in-line with European levels, Moorthy said.

Ironically, the success of all ocean-bound plastics initiatives will be measured when there is no longer any OBP left to collect because the right waste management infrastructure is in place to prevent any plastic from getting anywhere near the coast in the first place.

In the meantime, companies such as Bantam, Child’s Farm, Sainsbury’s and Lidl see the advantages of supporting OBP to allow the market to prosper and grow, and ultimately improve the lives of the communities of informal collectors and sorters in the developing world who are living with our plastic waste day after day.

Insight by Matt Tudball