Beatriz SIgaud – Senior Partner at DMS PARTNERS
In the previous post, we commented on the various impacts caused by plastic, including environmental risks and risks to human health. Plastic, if it does not have a correct destination, can remain in the plastic for up to 400 years. land or in the ocean.
Here, we will bring some initiatives from companies and NGOs that help reduce the impact of plastic on the environment. Here are some examples:
NATURAL ONE
Natural One, a Brazilian juice producer, developed packaging made with PET PCR. This is a resin recycled after consumption, made from used and discarded plastic. With an investment of R$2.4 million, they became the first Brazilian juice company to use 100% recycled plastic packaging.
COKE
Coca-Cola has become the world's biggest plastic polluter, producing around 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging worldwide each year, equivalent to around 88 billion bottles per year or 167,000 bottles per minute.
Swire Coca-Cola, the company's partner in Hong Kong, is helping to build the city's first bottle recycling plant. It is one of the most important recycling initiatives from one of Coca-Cola's partners and could pave the way for more sustainable enterprises in China. The intention is to capture most of the 5 million plastic bottles consumed per day.
AMBEV
The largest brewery in Brazil has invested in new technologies, through partnerships with startups, universities, NGOs and recycling cooperatives to find solutions to neutralize plastic pollution generated by its businesses. It has already set the goal of, by 2025, eliminating 100% of plastic pollution from its primary packaging
(involving liquid products) and secondary, used to facilitate the transport of primary products (packs).
BRASKEM
Braskem is a Brazilian company that is a market leader in the production of biopolymers on an industrial scale. In 2022, it opened an innovation hub in SP to promote improvements throughout the packaging journey (from design to post-consumption). Cazoolo was considered the 1st Packaging Development Center for the Circular Economy
from Brazil.
By 2030, the company has a goal of eliminating 1.5 million tons of plastic waste and producing up to 1 million tons of products using recycled plastic.
To meet these objectives, Braskem announced, in the first half of 2022, an investment of R$44 million to begin construction of the first advanced recycling plant in Brazil. The unit will have the capacity to produce six thousand tons of recycled resins per year.
Advanced recycling complements mechanical recycling, which has been used as the standard recycling model for the past 30 years. Advanced recycling makes it possible to expand the types of plastics that can be recycled, but its capacity is still limited. The technologies used for advanced recycling are still in development and have not gained scale to date.
OCEAN CLEAN UP
The company Ocean Cleanup, an international NGO that develops solutions to remove plastics from the oceans and provide them with adequate treatment, removed, in July 2022, the first 100,000 kg of the large garbage patch from the Pacific Ocean. They have a goal of cleaning up 90% of the ocean's floating plastic pollution.
In the next Post, we will talk about some solutions being implemented around the world to solve the problem of intensive use of plastic and its disposal.
References:
NEWS, BBC. Documentary: The Recycling Myth, 2022. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbjlyC_r0Nw.
PENG, Zhou; SIMONS, Theo Jan; WALLACH, Jeremy; YOUNGMAN, Adam. Advanced recycling: Opportunities for growth. McKindey & Company, 2022. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/advanced-recycling-opportunities-for-growth.
EDITORIAL - BRASKEM opens the 1st Packaging Development Center for the Circular Economy in Brazil
www.braskem.com.br/detalhe-noticia/braskem-inaugura-o-1-centro-de-desenvolvimento-de-embalagens-para-economia-circular-do-brasil
EDITORIAL - how NATURAL ONE will replace all juice packaging with 100% recycled plastic.
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