Financial Times Europe - 02.11.2019 - 03.11.2019

2 November/3 November 2019 ★ FT Weekend 19

however, Nestlé is very far from that

point: it produces 1.7m tonnes of plastic

packaging a year, third to Coca-Cola and

PepsiCo among companies that volun-

tarily disclose how much plastic packag-

ing they use.

Nestlé has been methodically going

through its portfolio to evaluate how it

can make packaging more sustainable

but it is a time-consuming task. It took

the company nearly two years to

remove all the plastic from the dozens of

types of packaging used on Smarties

chocolate globally — everything from

production lines, quality testing and

consumer response had to be taken into

account.

“In the past, we would design the prod-

uct packaging with many factors in

mind, and its environmental impact

was only one of them,” says Cremades.

“What is different now is that we are

having to re-engineer our whole portfo-

lio of products with these principles in

mind. We are all going back to school

here.”

Similar initiatives are under way else-

where. About 400 consumer goods

makers, packaging producers, retailers

and companies in the recycling industry

are taking part in an ambitious project

led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

that aims to create a “circular econ-

omy”, in which plastic never becomes

waste.

Participants — who pay to join — say

the regular workshops have turned into

a laboratory, bringing together people

who once rarely spoke to one another.

Companies in the project have commit-

ted to using more recycled content in

their packaging, a key step in giving

recyclers and waste companies a reason

to process the stuff. But they have a very

long way to go.

“It’s not enough to just think about

recycling, they have to think more fun-

damentally about their supply chain

and the product design so as to need less

packaging in the first place,” says

Sander Defruyt, who heads the project.

Take Coca-Cola. Despite standardis-

ing its bottles to be more recyclable,

only 9 per cent of the plastic packaging

that it uses annually is made from recy-

cled material. Others are doing even

worse:Unileversays less than 1 per cent

of the plastic it used for packaging last

year was recycled, while Nestlé used 2

per cent.

One issue is that designers and mar-

keters often balk at the quality and look

of recycled plastic. “It often comes in

shades of grey, and consumers aren’t

used to seeing that,” says one designer.

“It’s up to us to explain to them why the

packaging looks different.”

At Waitrose, everyone agreed on get-

ting rid of black plastic ready-meal

trays, as machines at waste-sorting

facilities cannot see them, making recy-

cling impossible. However, the market-

ers disliked the appearance of the pink,

light-green and beige recycled plastic

trays devised as alternatives.

Eventually the sustainability side

won, but only after trials proved that

consumers did not mind. Thenew mul-

ticoloured trays re now being rolleda

out nationally — accompanied with

small shelf signs to explain why they

look different — in a move that will pre-

vent 500 tons of black plastic ending up

in landfill or incineration each year.

Other problems are harder to crack.

No one yet has a fix for the crisp bag — its

thin layers of flexible plastic and metal

Continuedfrompage 18

are ideal for keeping your Doritos or

Walkers fresh and crunchy but make

them impractical to recycle.

“The real problem is that the technol-

ogy to recycle plastic films just doesn’t

exist,” says Mark Miodownik, a profes-

sor of material science at University Col-

lege London, referring to the plastic in

clingfilm, plastic bags, produce bags and

multimaterial sachets. Then there is the

toothpaste tube. Colgate-Palmolive, the

world’s biggest toothpaste maker, has

spent five years working on a recyclable

tube. We currently use roughly20 bil-

lion tubes annually, all of which end up

in landfills or incinerated.

To make the tube easily recyclable,

Colgate had to get rid of the thin layer of

aluminium inside and pick a type of

plastic known as HDPE that was already

being reprocessed by waste-manage-

ment companies.

The polymer scientists tested dozens

of recipes before finding one that allows

people to comfortably squeeze out the

toothpaste, protects the product and

meets the demands of high-speed pro-

duction. More than 100 production

lines in 21 factories worldwide will need

to be retooled. Colgate will start selling

the new tube on its Tom’s of Maine

brand early next year, says Tom Heaslip,

the company’s head of global packaging,

but it will take until 2025 to roll it out to

other brands:

“The conversions take time.” Unfor-

tunately, Colgate-Palmolive’s efforts

will only pay off if it can convince waste-

management companies to see the

tubes as valuable enough to collect and

recycle. “Dealing with the recycling

system is a bigger challenge than

getting the science of the tube right,”

says Heaslip.

Although few in the industry admit it,

the reality is that plastic recycling rates

globally are woefully low. About 8.3bn

tons of plastic has been produced since

the 1950s, but research shows that only

9 per cent has been recycled. The

remainder has ended up in landfill, the

ocean or loose in the environment.

High-income countries often ship

their waste around the world for recy-

cling but some of it is dumped instead, a

problem that intensified last year when

China closed its doors to waste imports.

Unlike glass or metal, plastic packag-

ing cannot be recycled ad infinitum

because it degrades in quality. While sci-

entists are working on so-called

advanced recycling techniques to over-

come this problem, they are not yet

commercially viable. In the meantime,

only14 per cent of plastic packagingis

even collected for recycling.

This reality has led green campaign-

ers to argue that corporate pledges to

make packaging recyclable are a cop-

out. They would rather industry reduce

the volume of plastic used instead. To

date, only one big consumer goods com-

pany has committed to do so:Unilever

aims to reduce annual use of plastic

packaging by about 14 per cent by 2025.

“It behoves the plastic industry to

confuse people. Recycling is bullshit. It

is a fig leaf of consumerism — a way to

appease our guilt,” says Siân Suther-

land, who co-founded the advocacy

group A Plastic Planet.

“We just need to find a way to use less

plastic packaging. It’s a temporary use

for a permanent material, and that’s

never going to be OK.”

Sutherland is not alone in calling for

the industry to step up. Almost half the

65,000 people in24 countries surveyed

by Kantar in September 2019 amedn

consumer goods companies as the most

responsible for taking action on plastics,

ahead of governments or retailers.

Sutherland took this message to

hostile territory in September: a pack-

aging industry conference in London. In

a cavernous hall, manufacturers of per-

fume bottles, thick colourful cardboard

boxes, shiny ribbons and plastic pump

bottles in every size and shape occupied

hundreds of stands.

As they hawked their wares, there was

a lot of plastic. Everywhere. Tucked at

the back was Sutherland’s “Plastic Free

Land”, where the activist had brought

together six exhibitors. They are part of

a wider movement of start-ups and

established players that are trying to

mimic plastic’s best qualities while

using coated-paper products, wood,

cardboard or cellulose-based fibre.

Among them was Sirane, a Shrop-

shire-based company that has created a

line of coated paper-based pouches and

wrappers. Founder Simon Balderson, a

bespectacled physicist whose company

employs 400 people and has five facto-

ries, says they had more success work-

ing with upstart brands than corporate

giants.

He pointed to a bright pink pouch of

nutty granola from gut health start-up

Troo, and a lemon-meringue bar from

Flower & White. “Start-up brands are

willing to take more risks with their

packaging and make going plastic-free

part of the branding,” he says.

Nearby, brothers Sam and Will Boex

explained how their passion for surfing

and experience of transporting boards

around the world (always wrapped in

plastic) led them to invent an extensible

latticed cardboard packaging sleeve.

Their Flexi-Hex packaging is now sold

to various industries that need to pro-

tect large items for shipping.

Others are going down a different

route: making plastic out of biologically

derived materials such as corn, sugar

cane, potato starch or cellulose from

seaweed or trees.

With $46m in venture funding, Israel-

based start-up Tipa has developed a

compostable flexible plastic film made

of bio-materials that can be used to

package everything from coffee beans to

fresh carrots.

Notpla, a London-based start-up, has

pioneered an edible, home-composta-

ble film made of seaweed, which can be

used to package drinks or sauces. Early

trials have included handing out water

pouches at the London marathon, Glen-

livet whisky pods at a cocktail festival

andreplacing plastic ketchup packets in

orders from Just Eat, the UK’s largest

takeaway delivery platform.

As they are not made from fossil fuels,

such bio-based plastics result in lower

carbon emissions — but that does not

mean that all of them simply break

down if they end up in the ocean. Most

need to be composted for 12 weeks at

industrial facilities, using temperatures

of 55C-60C, high humidity and oxygen.

While the UK has some infrastructure

for industrial composting, many facili-

ties still do not regularly accept solid

objects such as bio-based plastic cups. In

other countries the infrastructure

might not be in place at all.

A UK parliamentary study ublishedp

in September voiced concerns: “In the

backlash against plastic, other materials

are being increasingly used as substi-

tutes in food and drink packaging. We

are concerned that such actions are

being taken without proper considera-

tion of wider environmental conse-

quences, such as higher carbon emis-

sions.”

Miodownik, the University College

London professor, argues that bioplas-

tics are not the solution. “I’m all for us

weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, but

it doesn’t make sense to make a new pol-

ymer that there isn’t a recycling system

for,” he says, referring to PLA, a com-

mon type of bioplastic. “It’s a crazy

thing to bring on the market.”

The deeper you delve into the prob-

lem of plastic packaging, the more you

start to realise that there is very little

consensus on solutions. Every answer

has a rebuttal. Recycling is good! No, it’s

broken. Paper is the answer! It will

never work as well as plastic. Technol-

ogy will save us! It will take years to be

commercially viable. Taxes and regula-

tion are needed! Government interven-

tion is ineffective.

There are a few things, however, that

people do agree on. Consumers need to

be on board or even the best-inten-

tioned efforts will fail. Coaxing out new

behaviour requires learning by trial and

error, something that does not come

naturally to massive consumer goods

companies.

An executive at Unilever says that its

research shows only about 15 per cent of

customers care enough about environ-

mental issues to change their buying

habits, while a further 50 per cent will

only change if it comes at no extra cost

or hassle for them. “Our job is to find

solutions that will work for that major-

ity of customers, the great masses, not

the extremes,” he says. “That is how we

can have real impact.”

The other point of consensus is that

more experimentation is needed with

new models that encourage the reuse of

packaging.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation

examined more than 100 such initia-

tives ina recent report, from reusable

coffee cup schemes to bulk grocery

shopping, and found that they offered

benefits such as brand loyalty and cost

savings to customers and companies.

More than 40 big companies, including

Mars Inc, PepsiCo and Unilever, are now

experimenting with reusable packag-

ing, according to the foundation.

Loop founder Tom Szaky hopes that

his online shopping service can show the

viability of such models, shifting pack-

aging from being a waste product owned

by the consumer to an asset that belongs

to the manufacturer.

Tesco is expected tolaunch Loop in

February, followed by retailers in the

US, Canada, Germany and Japan. “My

dream is for Loop to be a global platform

for reuse,” he says. “It can be the engine

to help brands and retailers enable this

profound change of moving to a world

where waste does not exist.”

Much will depend on whether this

new breed of refill and reuse products

can appeal to shoppers who value low

cost and convenience above all else. In

all the anti-plastic mania, people seem

to forget a key lesson, says Miodownik,

namely to consider the entire life of a

product from manufacturing to con-

sumption to its disposal as waste.

There is no such thing as a sustaina-“

ble material. There are only sustainable

systems,” he says. “People don’t think

in terms of systems but that’s the

only way.”

LeilaAbboudistheFT’sconsumer

industriescorrespondent

Spectrum

‘It behoves the plastic

industry to confuse people.

Recycling is bullshit. It is a

fig leaf of consumerism — a

way to appease our guilt.

We just need to find a way

to use less plastic packaging’

Sian Sutherland, A Plastic Planet

I

t was one of those rare moments

when the internet, so often a divi-

sive force these days, brought peo-

ple together.

Millions around the world were

glued to a livestream of the online video

gameFortnite,desperate to see what

would happen next. But they were not

following the latest “battle royale”

between celebrity players Ninja and

Tfue. Instead, they were watching noth-

ing more than ablack hole, slowly spin-

ning into the void.

Insert your own cynical metaphor

here for what this says about teenagers

in 2019. But for gamers — of whom there

are an estimated two billion spending

more on their hobby than they do on the

music and movie industries combined

— the launch ofFortnite: Chapter 2 ar-e

lier this month was the biggest cultural

event of the year.

The black-hole event followed a “sea-

son finale” that sawFortnite’s island —

the virtual location for the game’s action

since its initial release in 2017 —

destroyed in a blaze of meteorites and

rockets. For two days, gamers lit up chat

sites with speculation about the next

instalment.

Epic Games,Fortnite’s developer, has

billed the new iteration of the game that

finally emerged from the black hole as

“more fun, less grind”. By far the biggest

change is to the terrain on which each

battle is fought.

The updated island features rivers

and lakes that must be crossed, as well

as new locations including Slurpy

Swamp, the Sweaty Sands beach resort

and Steamy Stacks, a glowing nuclear

power plant. Just as significantly, how-

ever, is that many familiar spots were

taken away completely.

Fortnitemay have started out as a

plain old game but it has become a

stealth social network. Regular players

treat the island as a hang-out spot as

much as a battleground. So Epic’s

destruction of the original island was

like discovering their playground had

been bulldozed or a favourite coffee

shop had suddenly shut down. No won-

der some are already feeling nostalgic

for the lost island of Chapter 1. “Lowkey

gonna miss the old map and every-

thing,” tweeted

Riversan, a pro-

fessional Fort-

nite player with

esports organi-

sation Team

L i q u i d. “ S o

many memories

made on it.”

M a p s h ave

been a defining

fixture of video

g a m e s e v e r

since an 8-bit

Mario shuffled

his way around the Mushroom King-

dom inSuper Mario Bros 3.Grand Theft

Auto ould be nothing without its recre-w

ations of New York and Los Angeles.

Players can explore theLegend of Zelda’s

mythic realm of Hyrule for days without

retracing their steps. The locales in

Assassin’s Creed,JourneyandMonument

Valley ll evoke a distinctive sense ofa

place and mood.

Rarely, though, has one place been as

vital a character

as Fortnite’s

island. Until last

month, the map

evolved incre-

mentally with

the game: ice-

bergs crashed

into corners of

the island, mete-

ors blew up less

popular areas,

sand turned to

snow as summer

gave way to win-

ter. Constant change has been a big part

ofFortnite’s enduring appeal — new “sea-

sons” introduce new themes and, cru-

cially, new things for players to buy.

With the latest changes inChapter 2,

however, the game has made a more

radical metamorphosis. Having created

a unique destination, it took it all away

again. For the people who had come to

call the island “home”, that is both

unsettling and invigorating. It is also a

bold gamble from Epic. The game crea-

tor’s job is like that of a city planner,

striking a balance between property

barons and Nimbys. Update too quickly,

and players won’t have time to master

the new tools at their disposal or learn

their way around the neighbourhood.

Update too slowly, and new games will

tempt people to pastures new.

Fortniteis now setting the pace, not

just for games but for other forms of

entertainment. Its rapid rate of develop-

ment chimes with the shortening atten-

tion span of its (predominantly) young

players. It also attaches a scarcity value

to the world it creates. Amid the abun-

dance of the internet, this is a rare and

lucrative ability. Where today we inge-b

watch marathons of “must-see TV”, so

games such asFortniteand its island set-

ting point to a future of virtual destina-

tions that become “must visit” — before

they are whisked away into the ether.

TimBradshawistheFT’sglobaltechnology

correspondent

Fortnite and the rise of the virtual playground

Tech World Developers are creating a sense of

urgency among players to complete games before

familiar locations are altered. ByTim Bradshaw

âtéP

From left: a

Georganics

toothbrush with

a biodegradable

wooden handle

plus plastic-free

toothpaste

tablets made by

Denttabs;

Waitrose is still

studying the

data from a trial

it ran in its

Oxford store

earlier this year,

which saw it

remove

packaging from

200 product

lines, including

fresh fruit and

vegetables

Above, from

left: a Loop

container for

lentils; Tom’s of

Maine will have

a recyclable

toothpaste

tube devised

by Colgate-

Palmolive

by next year

Photographs by John Gribben

NOVEMBER 2 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20191/ - 15:20 User:adrian.justins Page Name:WIN19, Part,Page,Edition:WIN , 19, 1