Post-consumer recycled material (PCR) is made from things that people discard every day. Example of such material includes aluminium, paper, cardboard, and plastic containers. The country-specific garbage collecting programs collect such material. Clean city project after gathering such material send it to recycling facilities. Recycling facilities then sort these materials into different bales. Later on, through this material different types of items can be produced. Hence, new PCR material is best to make packaging material. This article will tell you some interesting and lesser-known facts about post-consumer recycled material.
Do You Know How Much Packaging Material Is Produced Each Year?
 According to a rough estimate, more than 2 million metric tons of packaging material is generated in the UK each year. If you divide this number by the British population, you will find that every person disposes of about 36 kg of packages material. Further, the quantity of household packaging waste is about 20.21 kg. Hence, we can say that the post-consumer packages account for half of the global waste annually.
How Much Is The Total Global Garbage Recyclable?
The constant increase in the global environmental crisis makes people more conscious about the recycling of garbage. According to 2017-2018 studies, only 56% of post-consumer waste is recycled each year. While each year, we lost 21% of the plastic material through combustion. Likewise, through landfills, about 26% of the recyclable material is lost annually.
What Will Be The Possible Solution To Compensate For The Recycling Percentage?
When talking about packaging, today’s brands are much more conscious of environmental sustainability concerns. They demand eco-friendly materials to make packages. Among eco-friendly packages, the two types are most common, compostable packaging and post-consumer recycled (PCR) packaging. Both PCR and compostable packages are types of sustainable packages. But still, they differ in their processing and characteristics.
According to a dissertation writing service, plastic films are used in PCR packages to make them eco-friendly. Such plastic materials are made from post-consumer recycled material. So, PCR packages cannot be recycled again as it is already made from recycled material. So the greatest advantage of PCR packages is that the consumer doesn’t need to decompose the material after using it. Further, when PCR is exposed to the recycling stream, it breaks into its raw material
Apart from this, every year, new types of eco-friendly packages come into existence. Some latest type of sustainable packages is as follows:
- Air pillow
- Sea wedding packages
- Recycled cardboard
- Mushroom packages
- Apparel packages
- Paper packages
- Aluminium films
- Plant-based packaging
- Glass containers
- Organics packages
Deleterious Effects Of Post-Consumer Wasting And Global Warming:
Global warming has been the subject of the search for many decades. In almost all studies, scientists consider automobiles the major contributor to global warming as automobiles emit millions of tons of greenhouse gases responsible for increasing the global temperature. But, an interesting fact is that plastic packaging materials are also responsible for greenhouse gases production. In recent studies, environmentalists said that plastic waste could produce more greenhouse gases than automobiles.
About 1.9 million tons of packaging post-consumer recycled material and 860,000 cars can produce the same amount of greenhouse gases. So, the world is more inclined to limit greenhouse gases emissions caused by plastics.
Plastic Bags As A Major Threat To The Environmental Sustainability:
Not all, but the most common type of packaging material are plastic bags. People use them to carry fruits or vegetables from grocery stores to their residences. Plastic bags are a non-renewable packaging material. Further, these materials are the leading cause of world major environmental crises like floods. Plastic manufacturers have produced about 9.9 billion tons of plastic since 1950. But, unfortunately, only 8% of it has been recycled. The rest of it is roaming around here and there. Hence, 89 per cent of the total packaging material sits in the basin of the ocean. Also, many of it is destroying the sewerage systems.
Human Addiction To Plastic Bottles:
Today’s human is more addicted to soft drinks. Apart from soft drinks, due to increase in the water-borne diseases, the trend of drinking mineral water has also become popular. These emerging trends drastically increased the sales of plastic bottles. People prefer plastic bottles because they are easy to carry. Hence, according to a rough estimate, people buy about 1 million plastic bottles each minute. Indeed, this is a huge amount. These statistics represent that sorting these plastic bottles will become the most challenging task shortly.
Corrugated Packages Are Light To The Environment As Well As Pocket:
Among the list of bad news, finally, there is something that can bring a soothing effect for all of us. Yes, I am talking about the corrugated packaging material. These materials are eco-friendly. Even heavy rain can decompose such materials. These packages are bio-degradable and won’t trigger climatic changes as this material’s recycling rate is more than 89 %. So, the wrapping of products in corrugated material is a big step towards environmental stability.
Aluminium Has A High Recycling Rate:
Aluminum and steel stand first in the list of all post-consumer recycled materials. The current recycling rate of aluminium is about 74%. From another aspect, about 22 percent of the total steel and aluminum goes to landfills. As well as, aluminium also has many health benefits over traditional plastics that contain bisphenol A (BPA). Many experts think that you should not pack foodstuff into plastic packages. The plastic packages contain toxic BPA. BPA can easily transfer to your food and beverages. So, these days, especially for food packages, aluminium is most common. The reason is aluminium is gentle to the stomach and easy to dispose of.
Glass As A Packaging Material:
In the context of health benefits, you may also consider glass as a replacement for bottles. Glass does not contain BPA or BPB, which may harm you. These days packaging industries use glass to pack many things such as;
- Pickles and Jam are available in glass jars.
- You can buy wine, juices and soft drinks in glass bottles.
- The cosmetic industry also used glass containers to pack their products. All glass containers are recyclable.
The governments and authorities are taking steps to reduce the use of plastics and focusing on post-consumer recycled material as much as they can. We can also protect our environment by saying no to plastics and shifting to environmentally friendly consumption.
