Dame Juliet talked about the important role that science plays in shaping policy. In her role she is currently focussed on plastics, highlighting that since the 1950’s over 8 billion tonnes of this material have been produced and it now permeates every part of society and the environment.
Solving plastics is a complex problem that requires new ways of working and some hard decisions around the materials we use. We are very much at the beginning, but the technology and processes we use for plastics and materials are evolving and will look very different in the future.
Sandy encouraged our industry to focus on the materials that have value. She estimated that Polypropylene (PP5) has a scrap value of around $400-500 per tonne for recycling versus clear PET at $200 / tonne. High value materials have a greater chance of being part of an economically viable reuse or recycling programme.
Compostable packaging has an important role to play in the future but comes with a warning from MfE to proceed with caution.