There isn’t enough recycled plastic for companies to meet commitments. What now?

Recycling and using recycled content alone won't solve the waste crisis. We must design the idea of waste out of the system.

By Tom Szaky

January 6, 2023

Empty plastic bottle and various fabrics made of recycled polyester fiber synthetic fabric. Image via Shutterstock/Natali Ximich

Many companies have made commitments to drastically increase their use of post-consumer recycled content (PCR) in their packaging or products. Take Nestlé, which pledged to reach 30 percent PCR in packaging by 2025, or L'Oréal, which pledged 50 percent. There are even laws taking effect that call for companies to incorporate more PCR, such as Assembly Bill 793 in California.

But there's an elephant in the room: There's not enough recycled plastic for companies to meet those mandates or their public commitments (let alone their private ambitions).

And we’re not moving in the right direction. Virgin versus PCR plastic use in packaging actually increased (by 2.5 percent) between 2020 and 2021.

Why is there not enough recycled content to meet the needs of companies?

A T-shirt made from recycled plastic bottles. Courtesy of TerraCycle

The No. 1 way to address the issue is to design from a "waste mentality." Designing based on material that's already available in the waste stream — not just municipally sourced beverage containers — can be done through:

Closed-loop design: The best solution is to design packaging to be closed loop (having the ability to be made back into itself at its end of life). Let's look at two examples of this in practice.

Expo markers made from pens recycled by TerraCycle.

Design from waste (not closed loop): This concept is similar to the above, but would not involve designing bottle-to-bottle or pen-to-pen. Instead, you’re turning one type of waste (not municipally sourced beverage containers) into another.

P&G partnered with TerraCycle to create shampoo bottles from ocean plastic

All of the above ideas represent only a step on the journey and not the answer. Recycling and using recycled content alone won't solve the waste crisis. We must design the idea of waste out of the system.

It's time to invest in new business models that enable a shift away from disposable to reusable. This will be a shift as big as moving from horse and buggy to gasoline-powered cars or from gas to electric cars. But solutions already exist to support companies in moving to reusable packaging. Some have a regional reach or are sector-specific (reusable cup programs in quick-serve restaurants in Canada and London), some are cross-sector and global (such as Loop, a division of TerraCycle), and there are also various bulk initiatives run by retailers (Asda and Carrefour, for example).

With all that said, the true solution is to stop waste at the source. We all need to vote for a better future by buying less.

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