Fighting Against Residual Plastic Waste
Through everyone’s small and simple efforts, we make a collective movement that will allows us to help eradicate the plastic problem we face.
We strongly believe change starts with you. You as the company that uses single-use packaging, You as the supermarkets that give way for wrapped products to be displayed, You as the private individual who consumes in the way we have all been consuming for the past decades.
As the third most plastic polluting country in the world, the Philippines, is now battling its biggest nemesis: residual plastic waste, single use plastics and most importantly sachet, a clever marketing invention for lower income population but a nightmare for the environment.
But why is it such a hassle? And what are we, at The Plaf, doing to tackle it?
Understanding the terms
Sachet, soft plastic, single-use plastic, residual plastic waste, so many terms with the same meaning, or, do they?
Single-use plastics refers to plastic packaging, that are intended to be used once before they are thrown away or recycled. It includes grocery bags, food packaging, bottles, straws, containers, cups and cutlery.
Sachet (term mostly used in the Philippines), falls within this category but the latter refers more precisely to the multilayer laminates packaging formed of LDPE, PET and sometimes ALU. In other terms, they are the bags of chips and most of the food & candy wrappers.
The Philippines and sachet
Even if single-use plastic was at one point in time the biggest innovation, its impact on environment has been terrible. In the Philippines, the high consumption and lack of regulation on these types of plastic skyrocketed the amount of waste and pollution in the country.
The sachet consumption is so intensive that one year’s worth of sachet use in the Philippines can cover the entire Metro Manila 1 foot deep into plastic waste!
In fact, every year, 500 000 tons – the equivalent of 45 Eiffel towers or 5 000 blue whales - of plastic waste ends up in the ocean in the Philippines, especially in Manila Bay where Pasig river flows.
The reason being, is that plastic that is not recycled or correctly collected ends up in the streets or in mismanaged landfills. With heavy rains and river flows, it unfortunately finishes in the sea.
The top 10 single-use plastic items found in the environment are cigarette butts, plastic drinking bottles, plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, plastic grocery bags, plastic lids, straws and stirrers, other types of plastic bags, and foam take-away containers.
What harms does it do?
Microplastics
Plastic takes years to decompose and even when it does, it does not disintegrate completely. Instead, because of the friction of the waves, wind, and sun, it breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces or micro-particles. These are called microplastics.
These particles can then be ingested by marine animals, which are then eaten by human. Microplastics have already been found in common table salt and in both tap and bottled water.
Plastic is composed of a certain amount of chemicals. Even if studies are unclear on the results, ingesting it can cause many health issues. For example, Phthalates, used to make plastic flexible have been accused to favor breast cancer. Other studies have found that microplastic can cause lungs inflammations or interfere with hormones.
We all have seen the terrible images of turtles, dolphins or other marine life trapped in plastic debris. In fact, a study showed that 1 million birds and 100 000 marine animals are killed each year by ocean waste.
Plastic is therefore harmful to the entire biodiversity of the earth, animals and humankind, from land to sea.
The issue with recycling
Layers
The difficulty to recycle these materials resides on their composition.
Residual plastics in the Philippines are made up of two main groups: monolayer and multilayer films. Monolayers are typically made of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Meanwhile, multilayer films are made up of laminated layers of polymeric materials, such as, paper or aluminum foils.
Melt mixing is the simplest and most cost-efficient process of recycling thermoplastic wastes; however, each layer of plastic in multilayer films has a unique melting point and has a different response to elevated temperature which complicates the bulk melt mixing process.
In other terms, if melted at same temperature, you can end up with one layer that has melted correctly, one that burned, and one that didn’t melt…
The mechanical performance and adhesion can be affected as well as PE and PET are non-miscible.
All these characteristics make the residual plastic complicated to recycle correctly.
The Plaf’s solution
The plastic crisis was brought to attention, but nobody was really prepared for proper plastic waste management. There’s a lack of a full circular plastic economy, hence we’ve decided to set up an industrial scale plastic recycling plant.
As much as refusing plastics is the number one solution to the plastic crisis, we can’t sit and wait for all the backlog of plastic waste to swim right into our oceans, and that’s why there’s The Plaf - to somehow become part of the solution and not the pollution.
This is where The Plaf takes action.
We strongly believe that transforming plastic waste into a diverse range of new building materials will we create a stronger circular economy that can address the issues of marine plastic waste pollution and offer a sustainable alternative construction material that contributes to building resilient structures for future generations.
We are also specialized in EPR and Plastic CSR Programs.
The Plastic Flamingo serves as a potential role in imparting huge environmental and sustainability impacts in the Philippines, and enable our environment to reduce and recycle plastics.
Let us know what you want for your company and we’ll give our plastic responsibility packages - allowing you and your company to take part in offsetting your plastics, recycling them through us, sponsoring equipment or social impact salaries, and educating your management about the WHYs of this initiative.