Greenwash! Environment-friendly plastic bag claims prove to be false

It’s greenwashing at its worst — millions of branded plastic supermarket carrier bags claimed to be recyclable are not.

Thanks to the addition of a cheap filler, all in the name of making the bags cheaper, recyclers are rejecting them and they are ending up in landfills.

“I wouldn’t take them for free,” said veteran recycler Steven Cheetham, owner of Atlantic Plastic Recycling  in Cape Town.

“Yet the supermarkets implore their customers to ‘Please recycle this bag’. That’s complete greenwashing,” he added.

To cut costs, the plastic manufacturers, known as converters, started adding chalk (calcium carbonate) as a cheap filler to the mix, sabotaging the mechanical process used to recycle the bags.

In a so-called “sink-float” process, the used bags are put into a water tank where dirt and contaminants sink to the bottom, leaving the buoyant, clean plastic to float on the surface and be scooped up for recycling.

But fillers are far denser than plastic, with the result that the bags sink along with the contaminants.

This created “a big mess at the bottom of the tank”, said Cheetham.

“And then we have to dump it — at our cost.”

There  was no economically viable alternative to that mechanical process, Cheetham said.

The South African Plastics Recycling Organisation said a filler content of just 7% reduced the sink-float recovery rate of plastic bags dramatically.

The supermarket bags reportedly contain between 25% and 30% fillers, with the exception of one.

Only Checkers’ green carrier bag is currently free of chalk fillers, and it’s made from 100% recycled plastic.

Interestingly, the Shoprite group, which owns both Checkers and Shoprite, has a different supplier for its Shoprite bag, and that one has fillers, putting it on the recycling no-no list.

In January, Cheetham sent a letter to all his suppliers saying he would only accept Checkers bags for recycling and would reject all consignments containing any other supermarket bag.

Sapro sounded the alarm about the impact of the fillers in a detailed report on its website in October, warning that the use of fillers threatened to scupper South Africa’s “exceptionally well-developed” recycling industry.

“At 20.3%, our country’s mechanical recycling rate is the highest in the world and the envy of developed countries,” the document stated.

The fear is that the filler trend will extend to plastic bottles, too.

Chandru Wadhwani, joint MD of major plastic bottles recycler Extrupet, said he did not advocate the inclusion of calcium carbonate, or any fillers, in any products.

“This sets an extremely dangerous precedent,” he said. “I am led to believe that some brand owners are possibly looking to include it in HDPE [high-density polyethylene] bottles. That would set us back years on what we’ve achieved.”

Sapro general manager Annabe Pretorius said: “It is a cost issue. Virgin polymer is about R16 per kilogram, versus about R5 per kilogram for calcium carbonate.”

The retailers were not initially made aware of the recycling impact, Pretorius said.

A working group comprising Sapro, Plastics SA (which represents the plastic manufacturers), recyclers and retailers began discussions last year and has until the end of June to agree on how to handle the filler fiasco.

Plastics SA executive director Anton Hanekom said the group’s aims included agreeing on the percentage of fillers at which bags become “less economic” to recycle.

The Spar Group’s Kevin O’Brien said it was only in mid-February, when Spar was invited to attend a working group meeting, that the group was made aware of “this distressing issue”.

The revelation that most shopping bags cannot be recycled is the latest in a series of fails in the government’s 2003 plan to reduce the impact of plastic bags on the environment.

Bags had to be thicker and could no be longer free, to encourage reuse; and a levy on each bag — currently R0.08 — was to go towards establishing and supporting recycling plants.

In reality, most consumers buy the new more plastic-rich bags with every shop, and then discard those, and the levy has never been ring-fenced for recycling.

But a National Treasury spokesman told the Sunday Times this week that “R155-million has been allocated to the Department of Environmental Affairs’ plastics programme, which will promote waste minimisation, create awareness in the plastics industry, expand collector networks and support rural collection”.

What the supermarkets said

• SPAR

The Spar Group’s Kevin O’Brien said it was only in mid-February, when Spar was invited to attend a working group meeting, that the group  was made aware of “this distressing issue”.

“As a result, we have taken the decision to remove the recycling logo from our carrier bags,” he said, until  these were again 100% recyclable.

“Recyclability of our bags is non-negotiable,” O’Brien said.

• PICK N PAY

“We are aware of the current problem recyclers have recycling plastic bags containing high levels of calcium carbonate,” said Andre Nel, general manager for sustainability.

The recycling of plastic and plastic bags was important to Pick n Pay, he said, and the company was thus working towards “defining the acceptable level of calcium carbonate at which recyclers will be able to restart the recycling of the bags”.

• WOOLWORTHS

“We are aware that our bags are not being recycled and as part of the working group we are in discussions to find a solution.”

• SHOPRITE GROUP

“We confirm that the position regarding the Shoprite bag is still the same (contains fillers) — and the Checkers bag is the only 100% recyclable bag.

knowlerw@timesmedia.co.za