10 - Reuse it or lose it – part 2

How can we reuse our way to true circularity for valuable resources, and what does this concept look like in practice? If you missed our webcast on Reuse, tune in to this week’s episode of TOMRA Talks Circular, as we have published part 2 of the audio recording. This episode features industry expert Andy Grant, Technical Director – Local Government at Eunomia. 

Listen to the episode below, or use your favourite platform (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts)

Show Notes

• Paper cups vs resuable cups [2:38]
• Emissions in reuse systems [3:52]
• Calculating environmental impact of single use [5:58]
• Key assumptions and recycling rates [8:03]
• Big benefits for reusable takeaway packaging [12:17]
• Lowering emissions with every reuse [16:48]
• Disamenity cost – the value of a cleaner environment [18:37]

Transcript

Mithu: Welcome to TOMRA Talks Circular, where we explore how businesses, municipalities and governments are collaborating towards a circular economy. Last week we listened in on part one of a webcast that was streamed out on June 14th entitled “Reuse It or Lose It: How Reuse can Ensure the True Circularity for Valuable Resources”, which explored what's happening today in the field of takeaway packaging and its impact on the environment. In that episode, Geir Sæther, Senior Vice President and Head of Reuse at TOMRA, talked about a new system – the open managed system, in which consumers would be able to return qualified packaging to one of many and conveniently place collection points, making it unnecessary to return the packaging ONLY to where they purchase the product.

If you haven't listened to that episode yet, you might want to. This week we'll hear from Andy Grant, Technical Director at Eunomia. Andy will take us through the preliminary results of research he is conducting on an effective reuse system and its benefits towards climate change. Let's listen in.

Andy: Thank you. I'm really pleased to be here today to talk about the work that we've been undertaking, which is looking at the comparison, the environmental impacts of single-use packaging, both paper and plastic formats when compared to the alternatives of reusable packaging in a reuse system – a system similar to what Geir just described. And to date, we've been looking at the greenhouse gas emissions of a single-use format when compared to a reusable format. So essentially a cup, maybe a paper cup for coffee compared with what would happen if you had a reusable cup in a reusable system.

In the near future, we will be taking that thinking and looking specifically what it means in terms of climate change impacts again in a cityscape. So, using specific city models to look at that and also considering wider environmental impacts such as littering and so forth.

Mithu: Okay, so this is going to be interesting because I'm sure I'm not alone. You would think that a paper cup is better than anything. So, this is going to be interesting. Can you bring those two together for a single use and reusable models and what impact that will have on climate change?

Andy: Thanks, Mithu. Yeah, you're right. Intrinsically, you'd think that maybe a single-use system would have a lower climate change emission. And there's some similarities, actually, in how a single-use item and a reusable item actually produces emissions and contributes to climate change impacts.

But there's some pretty clear differences as well systematically about how they work. So at the top, when you look at the single-use system, you end up making emissions – by making raw materials, by producing a specific cup or package, by distributing those till it gets to the food or beverage vendor, and then the consumer purchases that and all the way through to that date, you've got raw materials, production and distribution all contributing to emissions for that single item. And then once the consumer is finished with it, that item ends up in the waste and recycling types, waste management type processes. And again, contributes to emissions might have some benefits in terms of recycling, but generally is still a net emission for most of those items.

Mithu: Yeah, if we're lucky, it lands up in this system. It might even not. That's right in the system. Right?

Andy: Too true, yeah it might be lost to the environment and essentially be contributing to pollution – that's right. And for each one of those items, essentially each act of consumption, each cup of coffee, you've got one of those items causing emissions. So, for 50 cups of coffee, you've got 50 cups all contributing to those emissions.

And this is where a reuse system is similar but different. In a reuse system, you still have all those emissions associated with producing a reusable cup. In fact, actually reusable cups generally were involving more raw materials than a single-use item. So actually, for that one cup you'll end up with for that specific item, more emissions in terms of producing the item, distributing it initially. But then it starts differing because once it goes to the consumer, you're designing the system that reusable item comes back into the reuse system. It is collected, is reconditioned, so washed, put back into the system. And clearly there's some leakage, not every single item is going to get returned. Some might end up in the waste and recycling system from that one consumption, but the vast majority go back through that reuse system.

So, in a reuse system, you have these emissions associated with making the packaging, but that's divided over many, many uses. Although it's a higher emission per item, it's consumption emission is much, much lower. One coffee cup might be used 50 times, so you can just divide the emission across all of those 50 times. And what you need to add on to that is the emissions associated with collecting those items, washing them, and reinstating them. And essentially, it's just a different balance of these things. And our job in modeling this work is to understand what those relative differences are, and essentially are their benefits or not? And we'll see some of those results as we walk through this talk.

Mithu: Okay, [laughs] that's a lot to think about. I would say for me, it's overwhelming. So how did you start this work?

Andy: It's like many of these exercises in modeling terms, we as a business undertake this work, um, across lots of different aspects of waste management type work. In many of these cases we have to build up assumptions, we have to put assumptions into a model to calculate the differences. Where possible, we've derived most of those assumptions from previous research – so clearly published estimates that are there and in use in all of this sort of work. In some cases, in a reuse system, we're entering new grounds. There's things that we need to estimate. We need to make reasonable estimates basically based on practicality, knowledge of how these things might work, extrapolation to other systems.

We'll come to whether they, you know, the sensitivities around those and whether it matters or not, how accurate we are and some of those in some of the later slides. And another important thing is, we've we think it's important to design the system, taking assumptions in terms of near future. We're not talking about exactly what emissions would happen today because the system isn't going to be just operating today. It's important to look to the near future and various things are changing.

So, we're looking at a 2030 timeframe for the results that you're going to see today. And it's important that we look at these systems and think what is the best that we can do with these systems? Practically, what is the best that we can do and make decisions around assumptions around that. We've definitely gone through a process of looking at values, thinking about what could change and designing what we think is a good approach in terms of minimizing the environmental impact actually of both systems by 2030 for a fair comparison. All of those results can be compared later on in physical trials through actual city type implementation of these systems and can be refined. But we think we've got a set of assumptions that are very reasonable and likely to point very strongly towards a certain set of results which we're going to share with you in a bit.

Mithu: And those are key assumptions are?

Andy: So key assumptions indeed. I'm only going to give you a really quick snapshot because you'd appreciate there's lots to this [Mithu: I can imagine] There's a lot of work in deriving these, but these are things that you can that I hope everyone listening to this can start to understand that we've given everything a good, fair analysis in all of this.

So first off, in single use, we have assumed relatively low levels of paper recycling – and there's a reason for that.

Partly by 2030, we'd expect separate collection systems in many cities to improve, but we're talking about paper takeaway items … things that have been used for food. They're going to have food potentially attached to them. Drinks … cups still going to have drink residues and so forth. So partly, there's a question over how targeted they are by municipal recycling systems. But it's also an important factor that these items don't actually recycle well in municipal recycling systems. They are going to be sorting this material to normal cardboard-type recycling. And you actually don't get much benefit from recycling high-strength items in those systems. And you probably get a climate change disbenefit, i.e., no benefit really from recycling those items. It's the opposite way around. So, we could have put up a higher recycling rates. We do make the case for paper single-use worse, not better.

And in plastics recycling we've got a 75% recycling rate. So, you know, most people looking at that, I'd think we'd say that's pretty ambitious for 2030, basically that all those items would be recycled at that rate. So, we've given it a really good, fair balance of assumptions for single use that we think are applicable for 2030.

Mithu: Okay.

Andy: And we have a slide next, which is some very key assumptions on what it means for the reuse system. The first one, which I'm really going to highlight … and Geir talked about this earlier, is essentially the return rate into the system. It's really important for a reuse system that you get a good return rate back in there. It's important that the system is designed appropriately, that it's convenient. And that the incentive that Geir talked about is set appropriately, that you get a good level of return. And that's quite key to the environmental performance of a reuse system.

There are other aspects which I'm just going to touch on very lightly here. There are aspects about what happens when these reuse items go out into into the wider world, into the city, and essentially go home into the home-like environment or business environment. So, we've made different assumptions depending on the items. Some of these might get directly returned, but some of them are going to go home. And in those situations, it's reasonable to assume that that for convenience people will want to basically rinse some of the residues off using cold water in the case of coffee and so forth. And in some cases where it's quite high food contact, the probably want to wash them in a dishwasher type environment before returning them because they're going to be sitting around potentially for a while before they get returned.

And there's another key aspect on this that various studies have considered values around. And that is: What happens if people make a dedicated journey to return these items? They're taking them home. They're going to jump in their car potentially. And then there's some assumption that they make a dedicated journey back. Many other studies have actually assumed very high rates of people due to taking these items back, dedicated in their diesel car and so forth. And we don't think that that's right. We think it's reasonable to allow something for dedicated journeys, and we think we've actually come up with quite a high-end estimate for that. But it's important because it's contributing to emissions. There's a few other aspects on there, but people can read them and essentially, yeah, we can talk about that later in questions.

Mithu: Okay. That's a lot of assumptions and thank you for taking us through all of that and helping us understand where you started this process. Can you now tell us what the results were? So, what are we looking at when we look at reuse and its impact on climate change? At least the model that got shared with us.

Andy: Sure. So, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put up a chart to explain this, but I will explain it. [laughs] These are the overall CO2 equivalent emissions for a consumption event. Might sound like a strange metric, but it does make sense. In single use, a consumption event is one use of one packaging In reuse, it's that basically the sale of one coffee or it's the sale of one hamburger and so forth. The green bars are showing the CO2 emissions for each item or consumption events for the reuse system. And then the yellow bars are the same equivalent, but in single use for paper. And the light blue bars are the single use examples where it's a single-use plastic packaging. So not, not used in all of these different formats.

You can see pretty clearly that in the individual formats, the vast majority of these, the reuse system has an emission of substantially lower than the single-use equivalent. And in many cases, half or less than half. There are a few key ones that where it becomes closer like pizza, which I'll talk about in a bit more detail. But as we run through all of those basically pizzas, the only one that really comes really close to where reuse might be broadly similar to reusables. The rest is pretty clear that a 98% collection rate of those reusable items – reuse is far more beneficial in terms of climate change emissions than the single use comparators.

Mithu: So why is that the case? Why does reuse actually lower climate change effects?

Andy: It's a good question and I'll try and answer it in a simplest way as possible. [Mithu: I can imagine.] But again, I'm going to rely on another chart I'm afraid. [laughs]

It comes back to what I described earlier on in terms of why there's a difference in the system, and it's about embodied energy in those specific packages. The amount of times that you get to reuse that embodied energy is key to all of this – plus the emissions that come from the reuse of reusable system in terms of collecting and reinstating.

What you can see … I’ve picked out just three of the formats here to show an example. And you have the reuse system over on the left-hand side and the single-use system over on the right-hand side. And you can see direct comparisons that cold cups on the left and then you have the cold cup single-use. In all of those, this teal color is the energy associated with producing the item in the first place. In single-use it's only shared over one consumption event.

On the left-hand side, it would have been a much bigger if it's that single item – but it's shared over many events. So you can see that you're sharing that in raw emission, the emissions from production so forth over many more times, and it's much lower in the reuse system because of that.

Stacked on top of that – in the reuse system, you have various different colors on the top there. They differ in terms of order depending on which reusable format you're looking at here. But the main issues that are coming in there is emissions from the professional washing. So, you've still got an emission. It's not climate change neutral by any means but adding those on top of those raw material emissions still don't result in single-use being more favorable.

Just a nuance on this chart which might not be immediately apparent. Those big green bars on the reusable system below can be deducted from the top of those bars, and they're the benefits from plastic recycling. So, these reusable items, the majority of them end up in the recycling process when they end up as end of life. And there is a benefit from recycling the plastic reusable items.

Hopefully that explains why systematically there's a difference. Essentially, it's always about balancing up this raw material input into the item, how many times you use it, plus the emissions that you get out of having to wash and reinstate these reusable items.

Mithu: Okay, no that helps. Thank you. So, if I'm listening to you and understanding you correctly, it seems that collection is extremely important. The collection of these materials, of these packages. Would you say that that's really one of the key points of this study?

Andy: The more times you reuse these items, the lower that emission is that's associated with the original production of those items. Yet, each time you're getting a further emission from the reusable system. But it is important to share that over many times. We've chosen a 98% collection rate as our core assumption there because we think it's reasonable. We think with a good incentive to return and a convenient system, 98% is achievable. You've got some examples in single-use beverage which are approaching that without the same level of incentive, essentially, and possibly debatable about the convenience. But it feels like a reasonable assumption.

You're only going to know for sure once these things start being trialed, you know, that's the truth of it. So, what we've done is some sensitivity analysis here and you can see that that actually this still benefit for many of these formats if that 98% assumption isn't quite achieved. And you can look down the list, they're the only one where you start to get really into this benefit quite soon is pizza and then maybe sushi a little bit lower. But bear in mind that all of these formats will be working together in a system. Coffee cups and so forth … actually, you can have much lower collection rates and still see a benefit from the reusable system. I don't think that's saying that you shouldn't target the high collection rate because they've already explained the benefits are better at those higher return rates. But basically, yeah, if, if the system doesn't quite manage 98%, it's still going to have a benefit.

Mithu: And this is all from the phase one that you started with … where you're part of the presentation. What else are you looking at?

Andy: Really good question. We think the format-by-format comparison that we've done so first in climate change is pretty key. Climate change is clearly a really important challenge. I think the next phase we're taking that thinking and carrying on, looking at climate change, but we're modeling it for very specific cities, which will be interesting because we'll essentially confirm some of the kind of assumptions that we've had around logistics and so forth.

But really importantly, also we want to look at the wider ability of this incentivized kind of reuse system to manage littering. And, you know, it was it was described earlier on by Geir, and you were asking questions around this. Littering is a key issue. It has a cost in terms of environmental impact from loss to the environment type material that never comes back into a waste management system. It also has municipal costs essentially, you know, from people having to clean the streets, empty litter bins and so forth. And crucially, it has another cost to society which people often forget. But basically, various studies have looked at this concept of disamenity cost, and this is basically a valuing of what society would be prepared to pay to have a cleaner, better environment. And actually, when those surveys conducted, it generally places a very high value, i.e., people want a clean environment around them and it's worth something to them. So yeah, next stage is, is to look at some specific cities and use those essentially to confirm our work and expand out on it.

Mithu: Especially that last point, the disamenity amenity cost, that's not something that I've thought about. So very interesting aspect. Andy, thank you very much for showing us what some of your results have been and really solidifying what Geir was talking about in his concept to say, yes, it is worth it to go out and to give this a try. So, thank you for sharing that with us.

We look forward to the phase two or the next phase of your research. And to and I guess that would be also another webcast coming up. For more information on the work TOMRA is doing and reuse, please reach out to reuse@tomra.com. Thanks for listening this week.

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