Single-serve dilemma: a preference for single-serving and convenience packaging is proving to be at odds with improving recycling rates - Municipal Recycling Update

Recycling Today, Oct, 2001 by DeAnne Toto

We are a mobile nation, and we want to take our conveniences with us. We tote along our cell phones, digital organizers and bottles of water. We bring single-servings of our favorite snack foods and microwaveable meals to work for what passes as lunch, often consumed hastily before or en route to a succession of errands, or at our desks amid a pile of work that needs our attention.

But what do we do with the packaging that remains after we've gobbled up the last of our microweavable macaroni and cheese and washed it down with the last swig of cola? Odds are many of us don't tote what remains home to place in our recycling bins, but toss it in the garbage at the office (or at the service station) before heading to our next stop.

Some within the industry speculate that our desire for mobility and convenience has contributed to the increase of PET food and beverage containers and the decline in recycling rates for these containers. But many are also quick to point out that the inherent and perceived value of the materials, whether aluminum or PET, also affects the rate at which they are recycled.

TAKING IT WITH YOU

Our desire for and convenience has affected the packaging of the food and beverages we tote along with us. Whereas the production of aluminum cans has remained essentially steady at 100 billion units per year, aluminum cans are losing market share to PET bottles in terms of the total volume of containers produced.

Pat Franklin, president of the Container Recycling Institute, Arlington, Va., says that the growth in the beverage industry is in non-carbonated or "new-age" beverages, such as water and teas. "These non-carbonated beverages are essentially being packaged in plastic and glass rather than aluminum. Obviously, bottled water is almost exclusively PET, and that is the biggest growth beverage of all."

Franklin says plastic is preferred for several reasons, notably its light weight and breakage resistance.

Plastic containers are also re-sealable, Pete Dinger, director of technology for the American Plastics Council, Washington, adds. This feature is particularly attractive among the mobile.

Other than portability, there are a variety of other features associated with food and beverage packaging materials.

MATERIAL ADVANTAGES

Robin King, V.P. of public affairs for The Aluminum Association, Washington, says that 12-ounce aluminum cans chill more quickly and better preserve carbonation as compared to plastic bottles. In addition, King says, aluminum cans provide pricing and recycling efficiency.

"Consumers realize the efficiency of the can in pricing benefits to the bottled package," King says. He adds that two out of every three cans make their way back into the can manufacturing stream. "That's a far greater recycling rate and package efficiency than any other beverage container."

King also believes that aluminum provides an advantage in single-serving multipacks. "The price efficiency is the reason grocery stores sell so much volume through cans."

Franklin says that according to the beer industry data, there seems to be a regional preference for aluminum cans, with cans making up a greater percentage of packaged beer sales in southern and western states. "Essentially, it's pretty easy. Aluminum is a good conductor of hot and cold," she says.

However, Dinger says plastic is "a very good insulator compared to other packaging. That's one of the interesting things about the new beer bottle." Although the plastic beer bottles may not feel as cold to the hand because of the insulating property of plastic, Dinger says, the beer actually stays colder longer.

Dinger also credits plastic's light weight as a benefit, particularly in fuel-savings throughout the distribution chain. It's also a very adaptable material.

"The barrier properties can be engineered for the product requirements. That's one of the beauties of plastic, because it is so many different materials," Dinger says. The plastic molecule can be modified by "hooking other chemicals to it with different additives, different rheological properties, layering it with different barrier materials," he explains.

But this adaptability also complicates recycling.

"Instead of having relatively homogenous types of plastic packaging, we are now getting these hybrid packages ... where you are getting various types of resins together in the same package," John Hanson, president of Ontario-based Hanson Research and Communications, says. Hanson is the former executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario, Toronto.

These hybrids result in better vapor barrier liners to increase shelf life. "It means that plastic will be increasingly more competitive with other types of packaging," Hanson says. "But that's what is creating the recycling challenge. Every presentation I've seen has shown very clearly that the trend is toward these more complex plastic packages. I guess I should also say that when you are talking about composites and laminates, it's not just different types of plastic resin that are incorporated. Sometimes you are getting into different materials where you've got combinations of metal, plastic and paper in the same package. We know that there are a lot of challenges in effectively separating out those different materials. But it can be done," Hanson adds.