Plastics Unwrapped

In Recycling and Beyond Part 2, Haley Lowry, Global Sustainability Director at Dow, and Jeroen Verhoeven, Vice President of Value Chain Development at Neste, discuss the quiet industry collaborations that are helping companies break out of their silos to achieve their sustainability targets. We explore the potential behind this collaborative approach in rebalancing carbon and circularity challenges the industry is facing and what solutions could comprise disruptive mechanical and advanced recycling business models.

We take a look at how a collaborative approach can allow companies to keep each other honest in their sustainability efforts, scale technologies and create the right policy and regulatory frameworks to help the industry redefine the inputs used to make plastics, including fossil fuels.

In Recycling and Beyond Part 1, we explore the challenges of collecting and sorting plastic waste, and the necessity to build infrastructure while balancing the needs of communities dealing with waste. Featuring global waste management expert, author and technical editor of UNEP’s Global Waste Management Outlook 2, Zoë Lenkiewicz, and Regional Director in Africa for ChildFund International, Chege Ngugi, this episode dives into how children and communities in Africa are at the frontline of plastic waste and its mismanagement and what steps are being taken by public, private and civil society stakeholders to ensure plastic waste becomes a more circular solution for these communities.

In part two of our design thinking discussion, we delve into how design can impact a country and a company's climate goals, as up to 80% percent of a product's lifetime emissions are determined by decisions made at the design stage. With guests Rosalie McMillan, Co-founder of Smile Plastics, and Daniella Souza Miranda, Global Marketing Director at Dow, we explore how large and small businesses are implementing design thinking into their core strategies.

In part one of Design Thinking Plastics, we explore the history of how designers helped plastic become a core part of modern life.  Tony Chambers, Founder of TC & Friends and former editor-in-chief of Wallpaper, delves into how design thinking is reimagining the role of plastics and how designers are pivoting to give a new life to plastics.  From the role of producers and their responsibility to hyper-aware consumers and their perception of plastics, Tony explores how design thinking from the very outset of a product's life cycle can help address plastic waste and ensure its future in a circular world. 

A sustainable future requires the creation of a circular economy for plastic, and we must build systems with decarbonisation at the core.

In Episode #4 of Plastics Unwrapped, we explored how advanced recycling technologies will play a key role in accelerating a circular economy for plastic. In this episode, we take it a step further and address how this process can help us decarbonise operations. We sat down with Oliver Borek from Mura, a world leader in advanced recycling technology, Virginia Janssens, the Managing Director for Plastics Europe, and Marc van den Biggelaar, Sustainability Director at Dow, to discuss what’s needed to create a circular economy for plastics, how we're scaling advanced recycling, and considerations for how the industry can reach net zero.

While the industry agrees that there’s a need to decarbonize plastics, is a comparison to coal fair? In this episode, Dow’s Carolina Gregorio is in discussion with David Carroll of Plastics Europe and David Croft of Reckitt as they explore the journey the plastics industry needs to take to reach net zero emissions, and how the smallest of shifts in consumer behaviour can drastically decrease the amount of virgin plastics needed to make packaging. 

Key discussion points:

1. Discussion of the learnings from the Reshaping Plastics study. (08:00)
2. Dow’s investment in decarbonization and reaching net zero (17:22)
3. The drive from consumers for more recyclable products and plastic recycling schemes (23:00)

This episode explores the challenges faced by Africa’s informal waste sector, with a focus on the partnerships helping to improve the continent’s plastics value chain to enable the scaling of advanced recycling solutions. Adwoa Coleman is joined by Vivien Luk, Executive Director of non-profit organization WORK, and Cordie Aziz-Nash, founder of Environment 360, for this thought-provoking discussion. The panel touch on the effects of COVID-19 on plastics processing chains in Africa and describe the changes needed to transform the continent’s informal waste sector. 

Key discussion points: 

• Defining what climate justice means (07:47)
• The challenges faced by Africa’s plastics value chain (12:24)
• The role of the private sector in implementing change (28:08)

This episode explores the role of design in enabling a circular economy for plastics, by delving into the challenges and opportunities of scaling designing for recycling solutions. Julie Zaniewski is joined in this conversation by Jay Fitzgerald from the US Department of Energy and Kathleen Liang from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The panel discusses the role of individual businesses in advancing plastics recycling and set out their own company goals, including objectives for improving waste management, reducing greenhouse gases, and increasing the recyclability of products. 

Key discussion points: 

• Dow’s commitment to ensuring all products sold into packaging applications will be recyclable by 2035 (04:00)
• The Department of Energy’s 2030 goals on energy saving, end of life solutions, and the reduction of greenhouse gases (29:10)
• US businesses focus on waste management (28:45)

This episode delves into the need to reduce CO2 emissions in the plastics industry and how Dow is working towards producing circular plastics with a lower CO2 footprint. Marco Ten Bruggencate is joined by Howard Chase and Erika Sánchez Garrido, from Dow, and Kaj Embren, a sustainable development expert. They discuss why the decade between 2020 to 2030 is crucial in terms climate protection and how ‘The Greta effect’ has caused public consciousness around CO2 levels to grow, sparking a rise in demand for industry action. 

Key discussion points include: 

1. Dow's partnership with Shell to transform furnaces and electrify energy (07:04-07:30)
2. How The EU Green deal is encouraging and enabling innovation (10:36-11:02)
3. The need for education to meet the low carbon economy goals (27:44 – 28:11)