Recycled plastic packaging: petrochemical industry mesmerises Brussels

Brussels – According to an  investigation conducted by several European newspapers, the European Union is turning a blind eye to yet another greenwashing practice: chemical recycling of plastic, which, under the guise of a sustainable solution, masks a very different reality: Packaging that is composed of a maximum of 5 per cent recovered polymers, while the rest is produced from fossil fuels. 

The British newspaper The Guardian, together with France’s Mediapart, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, Italy’s Altreconomia and other independent publications, have reconstructed the link between various brands that use plastic packaging, from Kraft’s Heinz Beanz to Mondelēz’s Philadelphia, to the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudi state holding company is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its petrochemical subsidiary, Sabic, has reportedly put in place an effective strategy to “clean up” its polluting activities. It labels the plastic produced in its factories as “circular”, even though it remains almost entirely fossil-based.

 Aramco, along with other players in the petrochemical industry, uses pyrolysis, an energy-intensive process that converts plastic waste into a recycled raw material, pyrolysis oil. However, this compound may make up no more than 5 per cent of the recycled raw material and must be diluted with virgin naphtha, a product of oil refining. 

In order for pyrolysis to be labelled as a sustainable plastic recycling process, the industry distorts the concept of “mass balance accounting“—indicating production batches that actually contain only fossil raw materials as 100 per cent recycled packaging. The other trick is “avoided emissions”: by subtracting the carbon that would have been released by incinerating a volume of waste equivalent to that recycled, an apparent saving is achieved compared to producing virgin plastic. 

The fact is that mass balance-based recycling labels are issued by the industry-led platform, International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), and passed on by plastic manufacturers to packaged product brands. Public records show that the plastic recycled by Sabic contains even less than 5 per cent pyrolysis oil. And  the carbon footprint calculation carried out by the Saudi petrochemical group admits that the entire process emits 6 to 8 per cent more than producing plastic from fossil fuels. 

The investigation claims that, under growing pressure from the petrochemical industry, European institutions are opening to including the mass balance principle in European legislation on plastics and packaging, including the possible revision of the Single-Use Plastics Directive
(SUP – Single Use Plastic).