- Brazil produces around 7 million tons of plastic products a year, 44% of which are disposable and single-use plastics, common in food packaging; a significant amount of it ends up in one of Brazil’s 3,000 dumps.
- The Brazilian Food Industry Association defends the use of the material because of its ability to “maintain quality and safety”; some companies, however, have been trying to find solutions such as compostable or recycled packaging, or even options made from materials such as glass, aluminum and paper.
- Experts promote the circular economy as the best solution, and the Brazilian government itself is soon to launch a series of decrees obliging companies to recycle up to 50% of their products over the next few years.
Plastic waste is a global problem, and the food sector is one of its main drivers. It only takes a quick visit to a supermarket to realize this: With the exception of some paper or aluminum packaging, our food is almost always packaged in plastics that then go to waste.
This is a recent story: Until the 1970s, the amount of plastic produced in the world was relatively small, but since then it has grown faster than any other material. In the early 2000s, the amount of plastic waste we generated increased more in a single decade than in the previous 40 years, the World Bank says.
According to the report, “A plastic-free ocean: Challenges to reduce marine pollution in Brazil,” published by the NGO Oceana, Brazil produces around 7 million tons of plastic products every year, 44% of which are single-use, disposable plastic; i.e., packaging, straws and cutlery, among other items, which are often used only once.
Bill 2524/2022, currently being discussed in Congress, offers proposals to change this scenario. Authored by Senator Jean-Paul Prates, the text provides for a ban on the manufacture, import, distribution, use and marketing of single-use disposable items, as well as establishing 2030 as the deadline for all packaging to be “returnable and demonstrably recyclable or replaced by packaging made from fully compostable materials manufactured of renewable raw materials.”
While the bill awaits final vote, the current scenario is one of increased production and consumption, especially in the food sector, of plastic packaging made from virgin resin and not obtained from recycled waste. According to Abief (the Brazilian Flexible Plastic Packaging Industry Association), in 2023 alone, the country produced 2.2 million tons of flexible plastic packaging. The food sector is the main purchaser of the material, grabbing a share of almost 41% of production (901,000 tons).
At the end of this linear economy, each Brazilian person discards an average of 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of plastic waste every seven days, while selective garbage collection serves around 70 million inhabitants, or just 32.4% of the Brazilian population, according to the Panorama of Solid Waste in Brazil. However, due to inequality between Brazilian regions, when considering the average urban population served per municipality, door-to-door selective collection reaches only 14.7% of the inhabitants.
The Brazilian Food Industry Association (ABIA) states that “all plastic packaging used in the food chain can be recycled,” but the truth is that not everything that reaches the cooperatives and recycling companies can be processed.
Some materials have a higher recyclability rate and a lower downcycling rate (loss of quality through recycling, making it impossible to return the materials to the food packaging chain), such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate, type 1 plastic), while others, especially flexible and multilayer packaging (which incorporates different types of polymers in its composition) are more complex to recycle and often end up in landfills.
As a result, much of this waste is still sent to dumps and landfills. There are an estimated 3,000 or more dumps in the country, according to a report called the “Panorama of Solid Waste in Brazil 2023,” by the Brazilian Waste and Environment Association.
The plastic paradox & technical and legal obstacles
The problem is something of a crossroads. ABIA defends the use of the material because of its ability to maintain the quality and safety of food, preventing “the proliferation of organisms harmful to health” and “reducing loss and waste,” while experts confirm that, for some foods, there is still no technology to replace plastic packaging without compromising the main characteristics of the product.
Legal milestones such as the National Solid Waste Policy, the National Solid Waste Plan and the Packaging Sector Agreement, which established progressive targets for recycling, reuse or correct environmental disposal, have been important to bringing progress, albeit lower than necessary.
However, Oceana’s senior advocacy manager, Lara Iwanicki, points out there is still a long way to go. “In Brazil, we have the National Solid Waste Policy, which imposes an obligation on companies that produce, import and sell packaging to carry out reverse logistics. But we don’t have a decree actually working, and few companies are complying with this legal obligation, so what happens is that we have a huge volume of plastic waste that is ending up in the environment, dumps, etc.,” she says.
The Ministry of the Environment acknowledges the problem. “Brazil is one of the biggest generators of plastic pollution in the world, but it has the potential to increase recycling. The Packaging Sector Agreement brought innovations, but it was a voluntary target of 22% recovery by 2023, and most companies are not in this agreement,” says Adalberto Maluf, national secretary for urban environment and environmental quality at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. He adds that only a tiny percentage of ABIA member companies carry out reverse logistics.
Actions (or lack thereof) in the industry
The eureciclo initiative awards seals to companies that commit to environmental waste compensation by issuing Packaging Recycling Certificates. One example of a company making this commitment is Qualy margarine, which, from October 2021 to the end of 2023, reinserted 20,000 tons of polypropylene plastic (type 5) into the chain, equivalent to around 790 million recycled margarine jars.
Nestlé, one of the world’s largest food companies, has announced that it intends to make 100% of its packaging “ready to be recycled or reused” as well as “reducing the use of virgin plastic in our packaging by a third by 2025” and “recycling 100% of the plastic we use from 2025.” However, the company did not respond to Mongabay and did not confirm whether the targets would be met, nor did it comment on strategies to achieve them.
PepsiCo, which owns several brands of soft drinks and snacks, among other products, also declined to comment on its goals of “introducing more sustainable packaging into the value chain” and “reducing the use of virgin plastic by 50% in its global food and beverage portfolio by 2030, using 50% recycled content in its plastic packaging, among other initiatives.”
In a statement, ABIA highlights efforts already underway in the sector, including “the reduction in the amount of plastic in water and cooking oil bottles, the use of biodegradable materials, the adoption of green plastic made from ethanol, the commitment to returnable packaging and the elimination of packages with more than one packet.” In addition, the institution is part of the Packaging Coalition: Together for Reverse Logistics, an initiative to increase the recycling rate.
Iwanicki, from Oceana, agrees there are some changes observed in the sector, although they are occasional and do not yet represent a large scale. “What we are seeing is that several companies are coming up with compostable packaging solutions, one or another returnable packaging solution, in addition to the classic materials, such as glass, aluminum, paper and cellulose or wood, which also end up replacing [plastic] in some applications. Ambev, for example, launched canned water, [since] aluminum cans have a much higher recyclability rate in Brazil than PET. So, there is already this transition,” she says.
She points out, however, that there are obstacles to a more robust transition, with health rules that often prevent the replacement of some materials. “Not every material can be in contact with food, which is curious because plastic has chemical additives and carcinogenic chemicals, and it is also allowed to be used in contact with food. These are outdated rules that need to be discussed technically and updated in order to replace plastic packaging.”
In fact, according to ABIA, the national health protection agency, ANVISA, prohibits “the use of recycled plastic in contact with food, except for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and provided that the requirements defined in the applicable regulations are met.”
Circular economy: The real ecological transition
The circular economy is a pillar defended by the Brazilian government, which is working on measures to advance regulation and inspection of the sector. According to Maluf, a series of decrees and ordinances are expected in the coming months that will give legal form to the commitments made in recent years on a voluntary basis by some companies — reaching targets of 30% mandatory recycling this year and 50% by 2040 — and regulate the verification of results, complementing other existing legal devices.
One of the most notable advances was the publication, on June 27, of the decree establishing the National Circular Economy Strategy.
The decision proposes moving away from a linear model to one in which there is a reduction in the use of packaging and the extraction of resources. This new model involves designing products for recycling using the right materials, according to professor and researcher at the University of Brasília, Patrícia Guarnieri, who has focused her studies on reverse logistics and the circular economy since 2004.
“We will always generate some waste, but the difference is that, with the circular economy, we generate more waste than rejects,” she explains. “Reverse logistics is part of the circular economy, making the waste come back, through recycling, reuse or, in the case of food, through composting, so you manage it to make this cycle infinite.”
Another decision to look forward to is the Global Treaty Against Plastic Pollution, which could have a major impact on the reduction of single-use and disposable plastics. The agreement was signed in 2022 by heads of state, environment ministers and representatives of 175 nations during the fifth Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. The final text of the treaty might be defined during the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which takes place between Nov. 25 and Dec. 1 in Busan, South Korea. According to the U.N., the document should include technical resources to “promote the sustainable production and consumption of plastics.”
In Iwanicki’s opinion, however, it’s still too early to predict the results. “There is also a perspective for alternative materials to plastic within the treaty, but it’s a treaty that is still under construction, so it’s a bit early to say how much influence it will have.” Even so, Oceana’s senior manager points out that the mere existence of this discussion is an important signal for the market and investors at this time of paradigm transition, showing that there is an economic niche to be explored — something the government may be missing by not understanding that there are jobs and income in the green industry and the bioeconomy.
It is in this context that Bill 2524/2022, promoted by Oceana’s Stop the Plastic Tsunami campaign, is being discussed. Iwanicki predicts, however, that the matter will move forward only after the 2024 municipal elections.
Paradigm shifts
From decrees and laws to concrete reality, there is a path that requires investment in equipment, processes, knowledge, training, environmental control and management. “These are changes that take time and demand resources, but which can bring results in the long term,” Guarnieri highlights. The government’s role in this context needs to go beyond the pen: It needs to monitor and enforce what is in the law as well as work on tax incentives, for example, such as the Ecological ICMS, a cheaper tax for those who use recycled raw materials.
Iwanicki adds that plastic, a product made from oil, has subsidies and a differentiated tax burden throughout the production chain, something that needs to change in order to make other materials more competitive. ABIA itself admits that “in many cases, producing virgin plastic is cheaper than recycling.”
This text was produced with the support of Climate Tracker Latin America