An emblem of ease, plastic is a time bomb when it comes to ecology. Production could double again by 2050. Paradoxically, it is however the least energy-intensive material, defends the boss of Plastipak. On condition of giving it a second life.
At the Plastipak recycling plant in Sainte-Marie-La-Blanche, near Beaune, the bottles arrive compressed in the form of bales. 160 tonnes are deposited every day here in the storage area. PET plastic bottles have been selected in the sorting centers, but they still need to be sorted to remove unwanted elements, explains Jérémie Manigaud, the production manager. “The undesirables, here, will be the overly colored PET, the green, the red which we will separate to give another channel to this material. It will also be everything which is not PET and these materials will be valued.”
These materials can be the plugs reused to make automotive equipment. The bottles are cleaned, crushed, melted in a deafening noise. The machines then reject granules which will be used to manufacture what we call “preforms”. These are bottle embryos, but they are not necessarily 100% recycled. Sometimes it is necessary to inject virgin plastic. “Today, we are going to say that we are at a little more than 40% recycled resin on all products, knowing that there are some which will have 0%, others 100%. Recycled resin is a little more expensive. We are talking about a 10-20% price difference between virgin resin and recycled resin. Now the carbon footprint is much smaller.”argues Jérémie Manigaud.
An insufficient collection system
And this is one of the limits of recycling linked to insufficient collection, according to the director of the Plastipak site, François Nicolas. “It always surprises, but we don’t have enough bottles. We have a collection rate in France which is not as good as in Germany or in the Northern countries, because we have a collection system which is not effective enoughhe justifies. So, we’re going to get additional supplies elsewhere.”
“We take everything we can from the French market and we look elsewhere in Europe.”
François Nicolas, director of the Plastipak siteat franceinfo
It is therefore necessary to import used bottles to meet orders from customers like Coca-Cola or Danone, singled out for their lack of sobriety. “Sobriety, we all agree”, agrees François Nicolas.
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“But to be able to make a container and put water in it for example, if you take the example of Danone, plastic remains the material that borrows the least amount of material and energy from our planethe defends. As soon as we move on to other materials, it uses more energy. So it’s in our interest to keep as much plastic packaging as possible, but to give it a second life.”. More than a billion more or less recycled plastic bottles leave this factory every year.
A real challenge. On the planet, nearly 400 tonnes of plastic waste are collected each year, 90% of which is not recycled. In France, each inhabitant consumes approximately 70 kilos per year. Barely a quarter is recycled.