The Coronavirus pandemic has seen a significant increase in the use of plastic in personal protective equipment and in medical assistance activities

Never before has the importance of not demonizing plastic but of giving it back the correct place it deserves in our lives been seen as in this period, despite knowing that such a versatile and useful product must be disposed of and recycled correctly to create new raw material . Anna Munzio's article tells us exactly about this.

Reuters spoke of a "plastic pandemic". Because the virus that has shocked the world has had the not entirely secondary effect of making us understand how indispensable this material is for one of its perhaps most hidden qualities, protection.

Of food and drink, but above all of the virus: this is how the "race to plastic" began, the new gold used in masks, visors, gloves, plastic food containers and bubble wrap for packaging millions of home deliveries.

A race that made us forget, after years of campaigns, the main problem of this magical, light, if necessary transparent material and which when it was born seemed ecological because it replaced natural resources such as ivory or wood: the decomposition times, which are measured in centuries, and the resulting pollution.

The solution has long been indicated for recycling. A system managed in Italy by Corepla which in 2019 collected 1,370,000 tonnes of plastic in a differentiated way, 13 percent more than 2018, and which today covers 7,345 municipalities involving 58,377,389 citizens. However, it too has been put under stress by Covid-19.

Between March and April, in full lockdown, the quantity of plastic packaging waste managed by Corepla increased, as did the portion destined for waste-to-energy processing and that sent to landfill.

The president of Corepla, Giorgio Quagliuolo, anticipates some data on this complicated year also on the waste management front: «2020 will see a single-digit growth in the quantities of plastic packaging waste managed by Corepla, with peaks precisely corresponding to the lockdown periods in March/April which showed an increase of 8 percent, in contrast to the reduction in consumption (-4 percent) and the production of urban waste (-10/14 percent) in the same period".

What caused the greatest critical issues? «To the closure of commercial and production activities and the abrupt stop of exports: in seven weeks of lockdown, the export of over 16 thousand tons of urban waste was blocked.

Furthermore, the almost total blockade of the construction sector has significantly reduced the use of the non-mechanically recyclable fraction of packaging as fuel in cement factories. Causes that combined with the saturation of available capacity in national plants.

It must be said that the system still held up, thanks to extraordinary interventions which however highlighted the structural deficiencies in the systems and in the national market for secondary raw materials".

If it is true that we are what we eat, it is also true that we are what we throw in the garbage: and the use of plastic is ultimately a litmus test that reveals the state of our society, its economy but also lifestyles and the ecological sensitivity of consumers.

So, will the plastic rush continue? According to the president, this depends on various factors: the trend of industrial production, propensity to purchase by consumers, the unknown of the Plastic Tax, the impacts of the European SUP - Single Use Plastics directive which intends to limit single-use plastic, «all factors made more uncertain from the pandemic. Similar uncertainties concern the collection numbers, for which we expect the growth trend to be confirmed but with physiological slowdowns linked to the contingent situation".

And bioplastics, which there is always a lot of talk about? «In 2019 they represented approximately 3 percent of the plastic packaging placed on the market; at the current state of technology it is more complicated that they can replace fossil plastics in some sectors, the medical one is possible that it is one of these".

Category: news - plastic - circular economy