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The Myth of the Circular Economy

A Circular Economy is a misguided and unattainable catch phrase.

Input is Output.

Waste collection and recovery methods, storage sites, recycling methods including how to separate laminate composites and remove sandwiched metallisation and what to do with recovered waste is convoluted.

A Linear solution is what the world needs. It’s that simple and yet that complicated.

“Recycling plastics does not work” – Boris Johnson

The Myths

1. Recycling:

*Less than 9% of all packaging plastic ever produced is recycled.

Plastic packaging constitutes a vast array of different plastics / different layers of plastics joined (laminated) together – to recycle – each different plastic needs to be separated from and within the waste stream – an impossible hurdle to achieve.

Many variants of plastic also are metallised with aluminium to provide consumer appeal packaging, which in most cases, is totally unnecessary.

The stark reality is that it is cheaper to manufacture new plastics than to recycle plastic.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment

This is the result of the utterly meaningless phrase – Greenwashing

2. Alternative Plastics:

Modified and/or Bio-degradable Plant Based Plastics
This will require vast areas of land and deforestation – usually with GMO altered product – as well as the volumes of Agri-industrial chemical which run-offs into all the water streams. This run-off finally flows into our oceans, our bellwether indicator of life and the Climate C.rises™.

Additionally, plant-based “plastics” seldom have any of the requirements for the vast array of plastics which are required to be “fit for purpose” for barrier properties. They then require additional coatings of other modifications

This small volume of plant-based plastics will need to be sorted and identifies within the vast tsunami of FMCG waste streams.

Within this group is a Start-Up Venture using sea-kelp to convert to a “green plastic.” Simply referring to the Global Ocean Temperature Data will show why this is impossible

Compostable Plastics
These require separation within the vast waste stream of various plastics and vast array of composite plastics used in FMCG Packaging.

Now that we’ve debunked the myths…

The truth?

Upcycled packaging.

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