The home of the energy, emissions and sustainability discussion

For many of us, 2020 was a year postponed. While we were focused on coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, we lost ground on other critical issues, including plastic pollution and climate change. It may have gone unnoticed, but the waste management and recycling value chain in South and Southeast Asia has ground to a halt while the use of single-use and virgin plastics has soared. The situation is untenable for the long run and the environmental impact is sobering. As we inch closer to the promise of mass vaccination and kick off 2021 in the Year of the Ox, it is time to adjust our perspective: these crises present incredible prospects for economic recovery and growth, and are not just environmental issues for the dinner table.

The need and the opportunity to transition to a circular economy—an economic model that is restorative and regenerative by design—have become clear to many industries over the last 5 years. Companies like Apple and Google are innovating or redesigning their products and services to minimize resources utilized in production and to promote reuse and recycling of their products. The scale of these efforts, however, is often constrained by barriers in the supply chain and ecosystem. For example, creating a product that is more easily recycled will do little to reduce environmental impact in the absence of recycling infrastructure or consumer awareness. Without collaborative action across sectors and across supply chains, these nascent efforts will fail to meet their full potential.

Recycling, an activity once associated with empty milk cartons and hippies, is getting a corporate makeover. Last week, tire giant Continental announced that it will use reprocessed polyester taken from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles in its tire production starting in 2022. The raw materials for the polyester — a type of plastic — traditionally used in tire manufacturing is derived from crude oil and natural gas. Making a complete set of vehicle tires will make use of more than 60 recycled PET bottles. In lab and road testing, tires made with polyester fibers obtained from bottles performed as well as tires made with traditional fibers.