OPINION: Another Step into the Minefield

I recently posted a reply to a reply (or a rebuttal to a rebuttal) to an opinion essay (blog) I wrote last month about recycling terminology as a “minefield” in which the plastics and packaging industries (and brand owners) should tread lightly. I said the industry has taken enough heat from environmental groups, legislators and regulators for supposedly exaggerating its efforts and achievements in plastics recycling and use of potentially misleading terminology about recyclability or compostability.

I specifically questioned whether the prudence of advertising multi-material barrier packaging as “mono-material” or “all-polyolefin” when that is almost true and is “functionally” accurate in terms of recyclability. That brought an objection to my comments as perfectionist nitpicking that denied genuine advances in recyclability of plastics packaging in the interest of linguistic purity. I posted that rebuttal – and my response – earlier this week.

In defense of nitpicking, I applaud the point taken in a slightly different context by European Bioplastics, an association of 80 industrial and academic organizations, in a position paper about the distinction between biobased and bio-attributed: “We need a clear distinction in the communication about the use of verifiable renewable feedstock and ‘bio-attributed’ feedstocks using mass balance. … It is essential to make accurate product claims about biobased content to avoid misinformation and greenwashing.”

Consider, for example, that a resin plant makes 75 million lb of PE in a month, and that 20% of the ethylene used as feedstock in that month was biobased – i.e., renewable, from plant sources. As I interpret European Bioplastics’ position, it would be appropriate to label each container of resin from that month’s production as having 20% “bio-attributed” content, because there’s no guarantee that any individual container actually has any “biobased” content.

That’s the kind of nitpicking that will help avoid needless scrutiny of industry’s motives and veracity when somebody outside the industry looks under the hood of these claims.