A deep dive with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste has published the first of a series of "playbooks" describing solution models for a circular economy for plastics.

The first playbook covers household waste segregation and maps the steps Alliance project partners — including BASF, Chevron Phillips Chemical, ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Procter & Gamble and Shell — have taken to encourage households to separate plastic waste in projects implemented in Argentina, China, and Indonesia. The Alliance launched in 2019.

The second playbook covers basic manual sorting of municipal waste and what can be done to improve it. Four success stories from projects in Brazil (Recicleiros), Indonesia (Project Stop — Jembrana), China (Lovere), and Kenya (Taka Taka) exemplify the pain points addressed, lessons learn, and critical success factors.

Sustainable Plastics, a sister publication of Plastics News, spoke with Nicholas Kolesch, vice president of projects at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste for a deep dive on the projects in Brazil and Indonesia. He discussed the importance of partnerships with local government and the plastic downstream industry; the impact on local communities through training and economic involvement; and shares perspectives on what the future might look like with better managed plastic waste.

Q: Why did you decide to focus on these projects?

Kolesch: Looking at Recicleiros in particular, there were quite a few elements that came together to make it an interesting project to feature.

The first one was related to the engagement with local governments. The Recicleiros team had a very clear and well-defined approach to getting in contact and selecting governments to participate in their program. We're aiming to support around 20 cities for implementation. Wo far, we're at 14. It's key that local governments are engaged and ready to participate.

The second thing was the element of the informal sector. A key part is how Recicleiros have been able to work with local cooperatives. That means getting those workers into a better livelihood, better employment, providing them with good working conditions with the necessary PPE [personal protective equipment] and obviously a well-managed sorting center.

The third part is the network that Recicleiros has been able to build in the downstream industry, the brands and other players that are off takers of plastic waste, as well as producers of plastic products. They are well connected with Recicleiros and form an important part of the ecosystem. What we've seen in all the projects is that you can have the upstream collection, you can have the processing, but if you don't have the downstream industry as off takers the project will not be successful.

Q: There is a massive community of informal waste pickers in Brazil. Formalizing the waste sorting system is sometimes seen as a short-term threat to these communities. Is there a long-term goal to integrate these workers in more technologically advanced sorting?

Kolesch: It is essential that the informal sector workers are integrated on their own terms into these programs. They won't be successful if you don't take account of workers' social economic condition, the fact they make their livelihoods from collecting waste in the environment and households.

Secondly, you must be able to accommodate them in a facility that gives them better working conditions, like Recicleiros has done. We've seen instances around the world where it's not happening in the right way, where workers are displaced, and their livelihoods are potentially being undermined. Fortunately, in all the projects that the Alliance has undertaken we've been very conscious of that as well as our partners, and we've seen very positive engagement with the informal sector.

Going forward, as countries move up the plastic waste management hierarchy and they move from one capability category into another, there's always going to be that system change that's happened in all countries. Obviously, then it's critical that these workers are part of that journey and part of that solution. For the ones remaining in the waste management business, it's important to upskill them. To provide the necessary training and to integrate them into facilities that might have more automated sorting.

What about Project Stop — Jembrana?

Kolesch: It presents a different case than the one in Brazil. In the early days of the Alliance (2019), there was very limited to no waste collection at the household level in Jembrana. It's important that we are able to transform a community from zero formal collection into an effective collection system with segregation between inorganic and organic waste.

That involved introducing the first bins in households, trucks for picking up waste, as well the material recovery facility to process that waste. We're very pleased, as was announced in June last year, to have it handed over to the Regency. The project makes a revenue from household fees and the sale of recyclates.

How efficient is the manual sorting process?

Kolesch: The projects are monitoring that sort of information. What is the incoming weight of material? How well segregated is it, in the case of Jembrana between organic and inorganic waste? Obviously the more segregated it is the better, when the sorting line is only inorganic material then obviously you can fit more on it, and it becomes more efficient. Segregation is critical, because clearly high contamination rates means that the workers have a much tougher job and it results in higher contamination rates so the value of that bale that might be coming together after it is sorted is also going to be lower because the contamination is higher.

What is the destination of the recyclate bales?

Kolesch: In both projects, the bales are destined only to domestic markets. Recicleiros has a very good domestic network of off-takers. One of the benefits of having multiple sites is that they are able to achieve high volume across the 14 sorting centers and attract the interest of larger scale off takers so, they can achieve economies of scale.

In Jembrana, on the island of Bali, there's not a lot of downstream industry in that tourist area so the bales are shipped into Java to Surabaya, where one of the main recycling centers in Indonesia is placed.

As for applications, it depends on what the next step of processing is. We're seeing if it's a PET bottle, some processors are just washing, some doing hot wash, some doing hot wash and pelletizing to achieve food grade quality. The same can be said for high density polyethylene. We are clearly seeing a lot of PET going into bottle-to-bottle recycling, there's a lot of new facilities on the island of Java for instance.

The European Union has adopted legislation that will no longer allow exports of non-hazardous plastic waste to non-OECD countries. How do you think that might impact waste collection in countries like Indonesia, where the Alliance is not just involved in household collection but also clean-up activities?

Kolesch: I think waste should be managed in the countries where it's generated as much as possible. Obviously, there are opportunities for international trade in processed materials, whether it's with good quality bales of segregated plastics, HDPE bottles, or a bag of flakes that have been shredded from bottles. The goal of course, though, is to ensure that waste is collected within a community and, wherever it's in the environment already, to also remove it from the environment.

There's no shortage of waste to be managed in Indonesia, that's for sure. The opportunity exists to increase collection rates so that we can also sustain a downstream recycling economy. And that's what we're aiming for. It starts with collection. That's where we want to aim in what we do. We're well aligned with the government of Indonesia on their goals for achieving improvements in waste management and avoidance of waste to the environment. The critical point is to get it collected and then also to support those downstream players who are turning waste into money: creating value from plastic waste.