The global plastic crisis demands urgent action to redesign our approach to plastic usage. With millions of tons of plastic waste polluting landfills and oceans annually, a linear take-make-waste model is no longer sustainable. More and more businesses recognise the problem of plastic pollution and implement solutions for a circular economy, focusing on plastic elimination. Just as examples, Ooho developed edible and biodegradable packaging, Lush solid cosmetics with little to no packaging, while Apeel is producing packaging-free food.

Plastics, while versatile, have led to an unsustainable linear system where products are designed for single-use, resulting in massive waste and pollution. Despite efforts like beach clean-ups, plastic pollution continues to escalate, with dire projections for the future. The prevailing linear plastic system is economically wasteful, environmentally damaging, and socially unsustainable.

·       Ooho: Edible and biodegradable packaging

Ooho is edible and biodegradable packaging for beverages and condiments made from brown seaweed, a renewable natural resource. It contains the product for the period of use without the need for single-use beverage bottles, cups, and condiment sachets. The condiment sachets are available on the Just Eat food delivery platform. During the initial trial with ten restaurants, the use of 46,000 sauce sachets made from single-use plastic was avoided. The water capsules were trialed at the 2019 London Marathon, eliminating the need for more than 30,000 single-use plastic cups and bottles.

·       Lush: Solid products that require no packaging

Moving from a liquid to a solid product can:

- Lower the cost of transport and reduce transport emissions

- Be more convenient for a consumer

- Increase e-commerce opportunities

- Present an opportunity to rethink the delivery model

- Make it easier to provide large quantities of product

- Allow you to use less packaging material per volume of product

Founded in the UK in 1995, Lush now has over 850 stores worldwide. It sells a wide range of solid products across hair, body, fragrance, toothpaste, and beauty care categories. Most products are sold naked in-store, meaning that packaging that was previously required to contain the product (bottle, container, tube) has been eliminated.

·       Apeel: Packaging-free food

Apeel is a plant-derived coating for fruit and vegetables which slows water loss and oxidation. It extends shelf-life without the need for plastic packaging, such as shrink wrap on fruit and vegetables. A single cucumber supplier is expected to eliminate more than 30,000 kg of shrink wrap per year using Apeel. A full life cycle analysis (LCA) has been conducted for Apeel coated products, and they outperform the baseline product in all cases.

By embracing a circular economy for plastic, we can mitigate the plastic pollution crisis while maintaining economic value and environmental integrity. Reuse models, innovative packaging designs, and material circulation initiatives offer promising avenues for reducing plastic waste and pollution.

Businesses like Lush and initiatives like Apeel demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of eliminating single-use plastic and adopting sustainable alternatives.

The vision for a circular economy for plastic, with its focus on elimination, reuse, and material circulation, presents a viable and necessary solution to the global plastic crisis.

Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash