The average European drinks 118 litres of bottled water each year, 97% of which are in plastic bottles, a well-recognised source of pollution and environmental harm. However, many companies such as Danone, Nestle and Buxton Water promote their plastic bottles as environmentally friendly using claims related to recycling. A 2023 report from the BEUC * (The European Consumer Organisation) shows many such claims to be either vague, factually inaccurate or otherwise not substantiated.
What kind of claims do companies make?
Many plastic water bottle companies claim that their packaging is ‘100% recycled’ and/or ‘100% recyclable’. These statements suggest environmental sustainability.
Amcor’s European consumer survey highlights how environmental claims influence consumer choice. Therefore, the accuracy of such claims is important in allowing consumers to make informed purchases.
100% recycled
An average consumer may reasonably assume that if a bottle is labelled as 100% recycled, it is made entirely from recycled materials. These materials should be previously used, collected, processed and remanufactured into a bottle. However, this is not true of plastic bottles.
Only the main component of most plastic bottles, made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), can initially be made from fully recycled plastic. After PET has been recycled a few times ‘virgin’ (i.e. unrecycled) plastic must be added to maintain product quality. This may include offcuts from the manufacturing process, which are often counted as ‘recycled’ content even though they rely on the production of more virgin plastic. This is not what many people would understand of the claim ‘made from 100% recycled material’.
Other components, such as the lid and label, cannot easily be made from recycled materials.
There are also different methods used to allocate 'recycled content' to each bottle, sometimes meaning that individual bottles could actually contain little to no recycled content. When questioned by the BEUC, only a few companies could name certification schemes to verify how they allocate recycled content.
100% recyclable
The term ‘100% recyclable’ is ambiguous with no universally agreed definition. It is reasonable to assume that recyclability should depend on both the nature of the material and the infrastructure in place to enable recycling.
However, the materials which make up a plastic bottle are not always recyclable by these metrics, for example caps and labels.
A Eunomia report commissioned by Zero Waste Europe shows how even the main PET component, which is a plastic that can be recycled, cannot be seen as fully recyclable as the infrastructure to collect bottles for recycling is not always available. Only 60% of plastic bottles in Europe are collected for recycling. Plastic also gets lost during sorting, cleaning and remanufacturing. Lost plastic leaks into the environment, is incinerated or ends up in landfill.
In addition, the recycling process degrades plastic meaning that additional virgin plastic needs to be added to maintain quality. PET bottles cannot be infinitely recycled.
Importantly only 31% of the recycled plastic from PET bottles is used to make more bottles. The remainder is made into other PET plastic products or ‘downcycled’ to make different lower-grade plastic products which are difficult to recycle.
Plastic bottle circularity
Inaccurate claims of ‘100% recycled’ or ‘100% recyclable’ clearly mislead the consumer. These claims are often accompanied by circular or green imagery. This messaging promotes the false idea that bottles can be recycled again and again, bottle-to-bottle, neutralising the negative environmental impact.
Bottled water producers engage in greenwashing tactics. To sell their products, they make claims that lead the consumer to falsely believe they are making good environmental choices. This effectively deters consumers from real sustainable options, slowing down any green transition.
Legality of these environmental claims
The BEUC report argues that these environmental claims should fall under the scope of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD). This EU legislation prohibits misleading actions and omissions in promotional claims and requires supporting evidence for any statements.
Plastic bottles harm the environment at every stage
Even if bottles could be processed in the circular manner suggested, all plastic waste management, including recycling, harms the environment by generating pollution such as greenhouse gases. Ironically, the manufacturing and recycling processes uses vast amounts of a decreasing resource: water.
The most sustainable way to consume water is not in single-use plastic bottles, but in refillable bottles from the tap wherever possible.
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For more information contact: info@scarabtrust.org.uk
Images
Circular recycling plastic bottles - Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images (ST ref: 1322)
plastic bottle - Image by pasja1000 (ST ref: 1127)
Greenwashing one to ten - Image from sigmaearth.com (ST ref: 1295)
*The BEUC report was made with a non-governmental association of national consumer groups across Europe with technical expertise from ClientEarth and ECOS.
Edited 6 Aug 2024