The chemical industry is now realizing that it will need closed material cycles in the future if it wants to continue making profits. But the way there is still quite a long way. That's why it won't work without long-term and clear legislative guidelines. By Henning Wilts from political ecology 171.
The production of chemical raw materials in Germany accounts for around 37 million tons of CO2 equivalents, which is around 19 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of German industry. (1) It is completely undisputed that the substances produced there are of central importance for large areas of our lives; the vast majority of environmental technologies would hardly be possible without chemical products. And yet the chemical industry is characterized by a linear structure of production and use that can hardly be reconciled with the goals of a resource-light and climate-neutral circular economy: The Chemical Industry Association (VCI) itself states that the focus on fossil raw materials such as petroleum and natural gas cannot have a future like this.
What is necessary is, on the one hand, a switch to non-fossil raw materials, and on the other hand, a fundamental change in business models. Today's chemical industry maximizes sales and profits by continuously increasing the quantities brought to market. The question of recyclability after the usage phase plays practically no role for the vast majority of companies in the chemical industry; Corresponding take-back systems hardly exist, and more innovative concepts such as chemical leasing have barely progressed beyond a niche existence for years.
The chemical industry – like other raw materials industries – has so far hardly dealt with circular economy concepts due to its position at the very front of the value chain. However, the legally fixed goals for climate neutrality on the one hand, but in particular the intensive public discussion about the linear use of plastics as a key product in the chemical industry, have led many companies and associations to look more closely at the issue.
Even though more and more companies are recognizing the opportunities of closed material cycles in times of exploding energy and gas prices, the chemical industry is characterized by a high level of persistence. For example, on closer inspection, the voluntary commitments to use plastics, which were agreed upon with great effort and intensive media support, are either shockingly unambitious – according to calculations by the consulting firm Systemiq, they will lead to a reduction of just seven percent in the plastic packaging sector by 2040, while at the same time an increase in volumes of 148 percent is expected (2) – or, according to NGOs, they risk dramatically missing the targets set, as with the “Alliance to End Plastic Waste”.
Circular economy as a transformation challenge
Against this background, the necessary transformation to a circular economy emerges as a central political design task, which, above all, would not take place at the necessary speed without clear legislative guidelines. The chemical industry itself is in a dilemma: it is increasingly aware of the finite nature of its current business model, but it is currently still so highly profitable that a realignment towards circular value creation would be difficult to communicate to its own shareholders.
This perspective may be short-sighted, but it is still understandable. The transformation to a circular economy will require billions in investments and should therefore be integrated into companies' long-term investment plans for efficiency reasons. However, this would require clear political guidelines as to where the industry should develop in the long term and which environmental policy goals should then be achieved. The long term in this context would mean 2050 rather than 2030, as corresponding investments in processes, systems and technologies are actually planned for decades.
The corresponding political impulses for this are currently coming particularly from the European Commission, for which the topic of circular economy is actually one of the strategic priorities within the framework of its “Green Deal”. From the Commission's point of view, the question of a functioning circular economy is not only relevant from an environmental and climate policy perspective. It acts from the clear conviction that Europe as an industrial location will only have a chance in global competition in the future if it thinks in terms of closed material cycles – on the one hand because Europe is a continent poor in raw materials for many key technologies and therefore dependent on raw material imports, on the other hand because the comparatively simple model of produce-use-dispose could very soon be copied in other parts of the world and implemented more cost-effectively.
The extremely ambitious European circular economy action plan therefore also corresponds to the subtitle of the action plan: “for a cleaner and more competitive Europe”. The plastics industry, as one of the central application areas of the chemical industry, is named there as one of the seven key value chains on which the diverse implementation activities focus.
Approaches to circular chemistry
There is a need for long-term guardrails for the chemical industry – which are increasingly undisputed, even by the industry – in order to force it to pay sufficient attention to its long-term survival. From an environmental protection perspective, no one would be helped if the chemical industry moved to China and Southeast Asia, for example, and thus increasingly evaded possible environmental regulation. However, this naturally raises the question of the level of detail at which politicians should intervene in the chemical industry.
This question becomes very concrete using the example of plastic packaging. They are currently made from a variety of different plastics, some of which are glued together in wafer-thin films: The lid of a standard cheese packaging can consist of more than ten different films, so the effort required to separate them for high-quality recycling can be higher than that Manufactured from new plastic. Even from the perspective of climate and resource protection, many plastic packaging should rather be burned. Analyzes commissioned by the industry put the proportion of packaging that is simply not suitable for recycling at twenty percent. (3)
One option would therefore be to limit the product variety by law to those plastic types and combinations that can actually be recycled. This would mean that recycling companies would have a much better idea of what waste they would have to deal with in the future and could invest in appropriate technologies and systems.
In some areas the European Commission is actually taking such an approach. For example, within the framework of the Ecodesign Directive, which is supplemented by circular economy aspects, it should be possible to ban products on the EU market (similar to the classic light bulb) that lead to non-recyclable waste. The ban on individual single-use plastic products with a particularly high potential for littering also goes in this direction.
Given the necessary long-term orientation for the chemical industry described above, the question arises as to what additional framework conditions would be necessary so that not only the symptoms are addressed (such as the ban on plastic straws or plastic bags, which are now often replaced by other disposable alternatives replaced), but directs investments in a direction that would enable climate neutrality and a significant absolute reduction in resource consumption.
With such overarching goals in mind, it quickly becomes clear that detailed regulations such as recycling quotas for packaging waste that are based on output, or license fees for packaging that are differentiated ecologically based on recyclability, can only develop their actual steering effect in combination with a clearly formulated vision for the future . Otherwise, the industry will invest a lot of energy in circumventing or undermining such detailed regulations instead of really investing in the future.
Keep a systemic perspective in mind
The Plastics Europe association has addressed this question and, in collaboration with external experts, has developed a concept of a circular economy PLUS, which, based on a picture of the goal, attempts to describe a combination of approaches that would be necessary to achieve it. (4) An association whose members generate their profits from the sale of primary plastics is positioning itself very clearly that closed material cycles will be needed in the future. Such a perspective also offers a way out of ideological debates around topics such as chemical recycling: no longer the question “Is this good or bad?”, but rather clear requirements that must be met for such technologies to contribute to a defined goal.
The necessary systemic perspective is also important: avoiding plastic waste must continue to be a priority in the future; technical solutions alone will not meet the dimensions of the challenge. The amount of plastic packaging waste per capita in Germany has more than doubled in the last twenty years – such a development cannot be sustainable and cannot be managed through the technical optimization of individual packaging.
Sources
(1) www.klimaschutz-industrie.de/themen/grundstoffchemie-industrie/
(2) www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/BreakingThePlasticWave_MainReport.pdf
(3) https://kunststoff Verpackungen.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/GVM-Recyclingfaehige-Kunststoff Verpackungen-2022-online.pdf
(4) https://plasticseurope.org/de/knowledge-hub/kreiswirtschaftplus-handlungsrecommendations-for-a-national-circular-economic-strategy/
