PLASTIC - 29.04.2021

Time to go plastic neutral?

Plastic neutrality

All businesses are under pressure to reduce the amount of single-use plastic they get through. Clients, customers and politicians are all demanding action and this wave of interest has inevitably created space for plastic neutrality . This is basically achieved by offsetting your plastic use. This is done by investing in projects that collect or recycle plastic, or you can purchase credits from an organisation that is tied to such projects.

How does it work?

Instead of planting trees or supporting renewable energy projects, plastic is cleaned up and recycling infrastructure built. A plastic credit has been defined as a “transferable unit representing a specific quantity of plastic that has been collected and possibly recycled from the environment” .

A good idea?

In theory, such plastic credit schemes could work by creating a system to finance the collection and recycling of all the plastic waste that would otherwise leak into the environment. In practice that’s hard.

In February 2021 two reports, one from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the other from The Circulate Initiative (TCI), which assessed 32 different schemes, highlighted some of the problems (see The next step ).

• No standards. There are no definitions, standards or best practice principles at the moment. This makes identifying credible schemes very tricky.
• Greenwashing. Many of the programmes offer little transparency into the pricing and practices that sit behind their claims. Exactly the same has happened with carbon offsets (which are now receiving some scrutiny).
• Misleading claims. The bottom line is that many companies will just want to claim they are “plastic neutral” for marketing purchases, i.e. by buying plastic offsets. You can, for example, buy credits for a project collecting bottles even if your business relies on hard-to-recycle flexible packaging. The schemes can therefore miss the point entirely: which is to remove or reduce plastic (and all single-use packaging), not offset it. Using volumes of plastic is also a crude measure of the impact your plastic consumption has.

Tip. Offsetting plastic, like carbon, should be your plan B. Or actually in this case plan C. Plan A is to reduce/reuse, plan B is to ensure more packaging is recyclable and recycled, and to use more recycled content. We suggest focusing on this rather than plastic credits and neutrality. Standards are under development so be patient.

Tip. If you really want to join a scheme then you should ask for details of their methods and pricing structures, otherwise you are at risk of wasting your money and being accused of greenwashing.

Tip. Steer clear of claiming “plastic neutrality” in your marketing materials. You can’t be sure the plastic you use and distribute is not ending up as pollution.

For a copy of the WWF and TIC reports, visit https://www.tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 15, issue 11.