Soft Plastic

Definition

Soft or flexible plastics are the most widespread single-use consumer plastic. They are commonly used as sachets, packets, bags or wrappers for packaging for fruit, vegetables, confectionery and cosmetics. They can be folded, wrapped or scrunched, and they are lightweight and durable. Despite their often singular use, once discarded these highly functional properties of soft plastics mean they also take hundreds of years to degrade.

Production

The consumption of plastic has doubled over the past 20 years, significantly driven by an increased demand for plastic packaging, which itself is set to double by 2060.¹ As a packaging material, soft plastic has proven so efficient at improving the transportation, protection and storage of goods that it overshadows less polluting alternatives. Modern consumer goods are now reliant on the material and supply chains are optimised around its production.

In 2019 approximately nine million barrels of oil were used each day to produce plastic.² Although plastic is currently estimated to account for around 6% of global oil production, increasing demand means that petrochemicals (oil derivatives used for making plastic) are set to represent close to half the growth in oil by 2050.³ Globally, the UK is the second highest consumer of plastic per capita and of the 828,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste disposed of in 2019, 38% was soft plastic.⁴ 

Despite being one of the most pervasive and practical packaging materials, soft plastic is one of the most problematic to dispose of and is generally considered to be of both low value and low quality for recycling.

In Use

In the UK the vast majority of soft plastic waste will end up incinerated or in landfill, with a small proportion exported for processing abroad. Previously a major importer of plastic waste (and in 2008 the first nation to introduce a carrier bag tax that reduced bags in use by 40 billion in just one year), China banned imports of plastic waste from the UK in 2017, prompting the UK to increase its focus on the challenges of soft plastic waste.

One of the first active measures to cut consumption of soft plastic use in the UK was the 2015 single-use plastic bag tax, which generated a dramatic 95% reduction in use. However, this measure also preceded increased sales of plastic ‘bags for life’ by 65% between 2017-2019, with 1.58 billion sold by supermarkets in 2019 alone.⁵ This apparent paradox is indicative of the challenges around the materials’ abundant production, and a highly fragmented and ineffective system for its waste management and recycling - soft plastics make up nearly a quarter of consumer packaging in the UK, but only a small fraction of this is currently recycled.

Recent efforts to reduce soft plastic production and eliminate unnecessary single-use plastic packaging, has led to climate action charity WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) working with the UK government and major retailers to create the UK Plastics Pact (UKPP) in 2018. Alongside efforts by the UN 2024 Global Plastics Treaty, the UKPP forms part of a global network that brings together organisations, businesses and governments to implement solutions that lead to a circular economy for plastic.

In 2022 the UK also introduced the Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT), which is an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme or EPR for consumer packaging, designed to reduce plastic waste and encourage investment in recycling. UK producers now pay a fee on plastic packaging that is not made with at least 30% recycled plastic.⁶ The UK Plastics Pact has a target of 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, but like recycling, compostable packaging and bioplastics are not without their own significant challenges.

Social enterprise Everyday Plastic takes a critical view of such measures, suggesting too much focus is placed on recycling and recyclability, rather than reducing plastic use, commenting that ‘Recycling plastics is not the silver bullet that many think it is. A circular economy needs to be built around materials that can be reused and recycled many times over, which most plastic cannot.’ 

While soft plastic continues to be cited as a vital material for tackling food waste, hygiene and even carbon emissions,⁷ research from WRAP suggests that the benefit of soft plastic packaging to increase food shelf-life in supermarkets has been overstated, and that a return to offering certain whole fruits and vegetables loose would enable UK customers to buy what they need as required, which would also have the benefit of preventing 100,000 tonnes of household food waste while saving 10,300 tonnes of plastic packaging a year.⁸

End-of-Life

The increasing use of soft plastic in single-use applications, combined with the practical problems of recycling means than an estimated 2 million tonnes of soft plastic is placed on the UK market each year.⁹ Of the approximate 2.5 million tonnes of annual plastic packaging waste generated in the UK, 46% is incinerated, 25% disposed of in landfill, 17% exported and just 12% recycled.¹⁰ For soft plastics this recycling rate drops to just 6%,¹¹ of which most is downcycled rather than recycled.

Energy created from the incineration of soft plastic is mostly used to generate electricity but unsurprisingly this process releases toxic and carcinogenic emissions into the atmosphere that make a significant contribution to air pollution and global warming.¹² As a fossil-based material, burning soft plastic is also one of the most carbon intensive energy sources, generating a higher carbon intensity when burnt than coal.¹³

When disposed of in landfill, soft plastic slowly degrades in a number of harmful ways, releasing methane and ethylene into the atmosphere. While underground, buried microplastics can react with other waste materials to create harmful chemicals that contaminate the environment through erosion, groundwater leaching and surface water run-off.

Despite generating a major share of plastic waste, soft plastics are notoriously difficult to recycle due to their low grade and value in comparison to typical plastic PET containers used for drinks and bottles. Soft plastic waste is also most likely to contain additives, dyes, composites and labels that enhance its appearance and is highly likely to be contaminated by food residue, which limits its market for recycling. Larger volumes of clear HDPE shrink wraps used in industry and transport are the only plastics to be considered to hold much value,¹⁴ and despite the high volume of soft plastic used in food packaging there are currently no mechanical recycling processes that are deemed acceptable for incorporating recycled soft plastics back into food packaging in the UK.¹⁵

The UK has set a target to introduce comprehensive soft plastic household recycling collections by 2027, but a lack of existing infrastructure means this service is currently only offered by 10% of local authorities, leaving voluntary supermarket in-store recycling schemes as an interim solution.¹⁶

In the UK, soft plastic recycling is currently subsidised, but only for cleaned, graded and reformed material. Typically, soft plastics are therefore exported to countries where the manual sorting process is not just cheaper, but also where full, ungraded shipments will be accepted as recyclable - increasing profitability margins on a low-value and often non-recyclable material. Although most soft plastic waste importing nations govern what can be landfilled, investigations have found that once brokered through various complex stages of waste management, large volumes of imported soft plastic are subsequently reclassified as domestic waste and requalified for landfill or incineration.¹⁷

Soft plastics are now the fastest-growing plastic packaging category and environmental law charity ClientEarth claim investments in plastics are increasing as a means to future-proof fossil fuel companies against a potential fall in demand for oil and gas.¹⁸ Despite promoting schemes such as the UN 2024 Global Plastics Treaty, they claim that lobbying organisations representing plastic producers continue to resist many legislative efforts to restrict, tax and eliminate plastic packaging.

Labelling

Since the launch of the UKPP, plastic producers are increasingly adopting recycling information on soft plastics to indicate recycled content and how it should be disposed of at its end of life. The UKPP also coincided with a broader rollout of new government-endorsed On-Pack Recycling Labelling (OPRL) or ‘Recycle Now’ requirements for soft plastics packaging, although this will not become mandatory until 2027.

The prevalence of environmental claims and labelling on soft plastic packaging has increased notably during this period. The most common claim is for a plastic to be ‘100% recyclable’, but other strategies, such as the introduction of plastic pouches to replace heavier plastic bottles, embrace ‘lightweighting’ techniques where traditional packaging is redesigned or replaced to lose weight and lower the overall volume of materials. Although such efforts may reduce transport emissions, whether or not such packaging will be recycled relies heavily on the availability and capacity of a functioning recycling market and, given the current statistics, does little to improve the likely end-of-life destination for soft plastic waste.¹⁹ In fact, a recent UK government consultation acknowledged limitations in recycling facilities capable of accepting soft plastic, stating that without investment it is ‘unlikely that more ambitious recycling targets can be achieved’.²⁰

Given the mounting evidence around the hidden impacts of soft plastics, ClientEarth argues that soft plastic recycling claims, and standardised labelling are misleading consumers by giving an impression of closed-loop circularity.²¹ At best, recycling guidance on soft plastic remains disjointed, contradictory and often meaningless due to the absence of an effective recycling infrastructure. Critics have argued that current guidance for soft plastic disposal fosters a false sense of security amongst consumers, who may feel less inclined to reduce consumption in the belief that the issue is being comprehensively addressed.²² In their latest ‘Big Plastic Count’, social enterprise Everyday Plastic concluded that recycling targets for soft plastics remain inadequate, with the UK unable to cope with the current volume of plastic packaging waste.