Kickstart: Eyeing plastics through a Swiss lens

We're hearing a lot about plastics and the circular economy this week as international business and political leaders gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.

A lot of companies are currently talking about their plans to reduce their reliance on single-use packaging (such as Starbucks and Conagra). But at the same time you've also got companies like Coca-Cola Co. pushing back about strict requirements to ban plastics, with Bea Perez, the director of sustainability, telling the forum that abandoning plastics alienates some consumers and while potentially increasing the carbon footprint.

"Business won't be in business if we don't accommodate consumers," she said. "So as we change our bottling infrastructure, move into recycling and innovate, we also have to show the consumer what the opportunities are. They will change with us."

Because some moves that seem like the best environmental choice really aren't.

Consider Loop, the home delivery of home consumer product system first introduced at Davos in 2019 and now working on a pilot development level. Loop is supported by top brands such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble and involves recycler TerraCycle Inc. It offers what has been termed a "milkman style" delivery system. Consumers order items such as mouth wash, which are then delivered to their home. The package for the mouth wash (or other item) is designed to be used, emptied, then returned via Loop, with the consumer arranging for pickup.

It seems simple. But global consumer brands are a lot more complex than your local dairy cooperative.

This recent article on WasteDive.com goes in depth into the issues facing Loop, and whether it makes sense. Begin with the fact that consumers will have to pay a deposit on reusable bottles. And those bottles are heavier to transport. And may get scratched or dinged. One reviewer noted she paid more than $30 in deposits.

Then there's the life cycle analysis.

"Loop is trying to minimize waste, but does that process still take into account the emissions to take that product back and reuse it and wash it and reprocess it and send it back out?" queried Alexis Bateman, director of the Sustainable Supply Chains program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview with Waste Dive. "I think that overvaluing one impact over another is usually the pitfall that these kinds of solutions come into."

It's never a big surprise when new leadership looks at new ways to do things. So departures at the Plastics Industry Association a few months after Tony Radoszewski took over as CEO aren't unexpected.

Among those people leaving the association in Chief Operating Officer Patty Long, who was interim leader following the death of Bill Carteaux, the man she called her mentor.

Long was a member of the 2018 class of PN's Women Breaking the Mold, and spoke then about how much she learned from others in the plastics industry.

"I have met some of the smartest and most inquisitive people who work with plastics," she said in a 2018 profile. "They are problem-solvers who enjoy their jobs so much that some insist they can't believe they are being paid to do what they love. When I look at the societal challenges we face — things like global food shortages, homelessness and marine litter — I'm comforted in the belief that there are solutions and people who are working toward them every day."