How Do We Measure Sustainability? Just One Word: Standards.
Buy coffee lately?
You may have noticed labels on the
packaging by “certification” organizations that track and certify that the
coffee growers:
- receive an above standard “premium”
price (Fairtrade); - comply with United States
“organic” standards (USDA Organic); or - manage farms according to
sustainability standards (Rainforest Alliance).
When everything works right, coffee drinkers
can rest assured that their coffee meets certain standards.
What about recycling? Sometimes an item carries
a label indicating that it’s made with a certain amount of recycled content. That
label applies to recycled content from a mechanical recycling process, but
currently does not apply to plastics recycled using advanced technologies that
break down plastics into chemical building blocks.
That’s why we think now is the time to
develop certification standards for advanced plastics recycling technologies.
Advanced plastics recycling refers to innovative technologies that break down
plastics into their molecular building blocks. These “feedstocks” then are repurposed
into valuable materials, such as raw materials for new plastics, industrial
chemicals, waxes or fuels. These technologies significantly expand end-of-life
solutions for plastics both in the U.S. and globally, which will help keep
plastics in productive use… and out of the environment.
So, how can we measure the recycled content in
a product made with feedstocks from advance recycling?
This is a timely and
important question. Companies in the plastics value chain are establishing ever
more ambitious goals to increase plastics recycling and the use of
recycled plastics. And U.S. plastic makers have pledged to recycle/repurpose
ALL plastic packaging by 2040.
So companies want to
measure—and tell their customers—how much chemically recycled material is in
the final product that they make, sell or use. This measurement is a key
component in many companies’ sustainability goals, so it must be based on transparent,
widely accepted, and trustworthy certification standards.
To help get the ball
rolling, ACC’s Plastics Division recently announced new principles to guide the
development of these standards. These principles will help standards
development organizations create methods to trace and certify the outputs of
advanced recycling and their use in new products.
Similar to the coffee examples above, ACC’s
principles recommend transparent third-party certification systems that will
track the flow of used plastics through the entire process: from recycling to production
of new materials to certified recycled content in final consumer or commercial products.
To make this feasible, ACC’s principles support a widely accepted “mass balance” approach that drives sustainable practices in multiple industries and has resulted in a high level of public trust. (For example, it’s used to measure “renewables” in biofuels and power generation.) Rather than following every individual used plastic molecule from origin to destination, the mass balance approach measures the amount of used plastic that enters advanced recycling processes and makes certain that claims of recycled content in the resultant products do not exceed that amount.
And ACC is not alone. Our approach is
aligned with other entities in this space, including the International
Sustainability & Carbon Certification system and Ellen MacArthur Foundation
CE100.
Broad global adoption of standards for outputs from advanced plastic recycling will provide some clear guidance to brands and the value chain to support clear marketing claims and removes some barriers to investment, leading to greater market and consumer acceptance. This will help enable more rapid growth of advanced recycling businesses, more collection of used plastics, and more demand for the outputs of advanced recycling… all leading to a more circular economy for plastics and helping companies and consumers contribute to sustainability.
More information on ACC’s principles.
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