[ FGC ]
QUEST FOR A CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Katherine Rich Chief Executive NZ Food & Grocery Council www.fgc.org.nz
28
If 2019 was highlighted by shoppers switching from supermarket plastic shopping bags to the jute bags, then 2020 will be about realising additional gains as an industry to reduce unnecessary plastic and packaging. Plastics and other forms of packaging play many vital roles to protect food, beverages and other liquid products, and replacing them is a huge challenge. Sure, there have been, and will be more, small and high-profile announcements such as banning fruit stickers, microbeads in cleansers, plastic cotton buds and straws, but these moves just tinker at the edges. When you look along the supermarket shelves you realise a lot of plastic packaging is going to be hard to replace because of safety, quality and practicality issues. Consumers expect convenience. How else would we get frozen peas and meat home if they’re not in plastic of some sort? It’s there to preserve freshness and nutrition (in the case of meat to also prevent cross-contamination), and nothing does those jobs like soft plastic. Someone complained recently about a cucumber being wrapped in plastic film “when it’s got its own skin to protect it”. True, but that film will keep it fresh for 10 days where otherwise it would last just a couple of days and contribute to the mountain of food consumers already throw away. It’s equally hard to seek plastic substitutes when it comes to products such as milk, hand wash, hair products… the list goes on.
FMCG BUSINESS - FEBRUARY 2020
While food and beverage manufacturers are focused on designing-out unnecessary packaging or moving to different materials – and will continue to do so – their options are limited. In many cases they’re also caught between a rock and hard place. On one hand consumers say they want more sustainable and recyclable materials, but on the other they want safety, freshness and convenience. It’s not always possible to achieve both. Work on solutions has been the subject of an initiative by the Food & Grocery Council – our Sustainability Committee. It’s made up of people from the senior level of companies, all with the goal of making the sector more sustainable in every aspect. Their initial focus will be on product packaging and the circular economy, and will cover plastic and paper packaging, beverage containers/container deposit systems, and compostable packaging. With the calibre of the people involved, I know we’ll see significant progress, and I suspect it will involve compostability and recyclability of plastics instead of outright elimination, due to it being very hard to find alternatives. Collection and recycling is also an issue in itself, because though we have an abundance of raw material, we have a problem with collecting, sorting and processing it into reusable resources. The issue is with the kerbside collections of many of our 67 territorial authorities and the disparity in what they accept for recycling. A survey by waste expert Lyn Mayes revealed the extent of the problem: 19 councils don’t accept any of the hard plastics #3-7 at all, 26 have no direction for ratepayers on if they accept Tetra Paks, 25 are silent on aerosols, and 16 don’t say if they recycle plastic meat trays. Five councils don’t offer any recycling information on their website at all! Take meat trays: they can be made out of PET, which is inexpensive, lightweight and easy to recycle, but just half of councils collect them. Until New Zealand gets its act together and collects enough of each type of packaging to warrant onshore recycling facilities, we are never going to be in a position to recycle, reuse or compost single-use plastics from food and grocery products. If a government wants to make big gains it might consider nudging councils to standardise collection, expand the types of material collected, and invest in recycling capacity. In the meantime, the sector will continue to explore more environmentally friendly options.