Every minute the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic waste is dumped into the oceans. A comparison often used by international organizations to describe the “time bomb” that plastic pollution entails. A multiple threat that is not limited to marine spaces or to the mere question of waste; Throughout their life cycle (from the extraction of the fossil fuels needed to make them to their disposal), plastics (there are more than 4,000 types) represent a global threat to the environment, health and climate.
One of the main responses to this crisis is to improve the circularity of packaging. Recycling allows you to create new items without the need to extract additional raw materials. Many of the products we use in our day to day are already being made with recycled material from the yellow and blue containers and which are used to create all kinds of objects: from new packaging to textile fibers to make swimsuits or beach loungers.
The path towards a circular economy also involves promoting responsible consumption and reuse as prior alternatives to recycling. Driven by the new community objectives, companies that work with plastic packaging are moving towards its reduction or elimination. “The reduction of plastic and the promotion of the circular economy throughout the production, distribution and commercialization cycle is one of the objectives in which we are working to achieve a balance with the planet”, explains Carmen Guembe, director of Sustainability at Suntory. Beverage & Food Spain.
As of 2022, all Schweppes plastic is 100% recycled and recyclable, and the company says that La Casera’s will be as well by the end of this year. By 2030 the company expects all packaging be 100% sustainable, made from recycled PET. “In addition, we collaborate with partners experts in this field, such as CARBIOS, a company specialized in chemical recycling, investing in the development of new technologies that allow us to enzymatically recycle plastic, thus facilitating the incorporation of more recycled plastic in our packaging”, adds Carmen Guembe.
For this system to work, the first step is the involvement of citizens, who have already integrated recovery as part of their daily lives. According to the study Habits of the Spanish population before the recycling of waste Catchment Institute for Ecoembes, four out of five Spaniards, that is, 82.9% state that they have, on average, 3 bins or spaces at home to recycle. Thus, in 2022, each citizen separated 27.1 kilos of plastic containers, cans, briks, and paper and cardboard. Thanks to the recycling of more than 1.6 million tons of packaging, last year the consumption of 21.46 million cubic meters of water and 6.72 million MWh of energy were saved, in addition to avoiding the emission of 1 79 million tons of CO into the atmosphere.