Plastics & Their Attributes.

A short summary

All plastics are made from repeating polymer subunits. The unifying feature of these is that they can be moulded into a fixed shape. 

It’s important to understand that the many different kinds of plastics fall within two classes, which determine their functionality and their recovery and reuse options.

When thermoplastics are heated, they melt into a puddle that can be cooled and reshaped, like chocolate. Thermoplastics have the potential to be repeatedly melted and reshaped, lending them to recovery and reuse. 

Whereas thermosets are more like eggs — once they’ve been cooked, boiled, scrambled or poached… there’s no returning to their original form. The change is permanent. 

We need to reduce the virgin plastic used and increase the proportion of recycled plastics in our packaging and products. “It is important to remember that recycling is fundamentally about generating a raw material that can be used in place of new (virgin) material. For this to happen it needs to be of equal quality and be cost effective to produce. Poor design, from a recyclability perspective, can have a huge impact on this”. 

When choosing materials, consider the reality of what will happen at the end of a lifecycle. If a product or packaging is ‘technically’ reusable or recyclable, but there are no systems in place to make this a reality — it isn’t genuinely reusable or recyclable. 

Reuse models circulate intact packaging and products while instead maintaining their shape and value in the economy. Reusable products and packaging are designed to be used multiple times, for their originally intended purpose, as part of a dedicated system for reuse. 

In a circular plastics economy, used packaging or products are reprocessed into a secondary (recycled) raw material or used directly in new products. Best practice manufacturing processes are used to maximise the value of the recycled materials and increase both the range of possible applications and the number of future lifecycles. 

We recommend recycling over composting for the end of life as compostable materials are typically less durable, reducing the viable number of reuse cycles.

Biodegradable does not always equal compostable. A packaging or packaging component is compostable if it complies with relevant international compostability standards, it has viable post-consumer collection (sorting), and composting is proven to work in practice and at scale. 

If a compostable material has been used, but at a thickness, or with additional adhesives or inks that mean it can’t actually compost under standard testing conditions... It’s not compostable.