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” of plastic pollution. 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 objects without the need to extract additional raw materials. Many of the products we use on a daily basis 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 containers move towards their 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.

Since 2022, all Schweppes plastic is 100% recycled and recyclable and the company claims that La Casera's will also be by the end of this year. By 2030, the company expects all packaging to be 100% sustainable, made from recycled PET. “In addition, we collaborate with expert partners 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 regarding recycling by the 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.

new types

The path towards circularity implies advancing in the recycling of other types of waste that, up to now, have not had a mandatory separate collection, such as textiles or organic matter. In the market you can already find garments made with recycled fabrics, also swimsuits and bikinis, made of nylon, bamboo and polyester from recycled plastic.

A hat made with ECOALF recycled material

In textiles, projects like Ecoalf's Upcycling the Oceans have spent several seasons recycling marine debris and turning it into bikinis. “Recycled marine debris has different applications, an example is the conversion of PET plastic into polyester thread for use in the textile industry,” they explain from the Basque company. “More than 4,200 fishermen collaborate daily with the project on a voluntary basis to recover the garbage that remains trapped in their nets, the waste is deposited in specific containers in the port and periodically transported to treatment plants for classification”. Ecoalf also gives used car tires a second life by transforming them into flip-flop soles.

And other typical summer objects are made of recycled material -many of them thanks to the plastic containers, cans and briks that the citizens throw into the yellow container. The Aragonese Industrias Agapito creates sun loungers made of steel and recycled plastic made from cans of drinks and preserves. A raw material that has many advantages over other materials such as wood. “Resists inclement weather, does not splinter and can be easily cleaned,” the company says. In addition, they ensure that “this urban furniture, apart from coming from recycling – between 1,000 and 1,500 plastic containers can be recycled in each sheet of a bench – is reusable once its useful life is exhausted or it degrades.”

Circular Economy series carried out in collaboration with the Ecoembes organization.