Follow Innovate UK on the Sustainable Plastics Mission to South Africa

Background

The UN Global Resolution to end plastic pollution was signed in March 2022 and paves the way for developing an international legally binding agreement by the end of 2024 that encompasses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal. Innovation and collaboration will be critical to achieving the step change signalled by this game-changing agreement.

The UK has been clear in its intention to act on the plastic pollution problem. Launched in January 2018, the 25-Year Environment Plan set-out ambitions for domestic reforms to reduce plastic waste and articulates the UK’s intentions to “take on an even more prominent international role in protecting the planet” “. It is essential to recognise that these ambitions may evolve in light of the changes introduced by our new government.

The Resources & Waste Strategy for England 2018 also includes a series of commitments to underpin the government’s ambitions, including to:

• drive international political commitments through the Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance;
• support developing nations to tackle pollution and reduce plastic waste; and
• tackle international barriers to a circular economy.

UKRI’s International Research and Innovation Strategy is aligned with these goals and includes commitments to maximise the impact of UK research to help address the world’s greatest challenges, with a particular focus on the thematic priority of a Clean Environment, Sustainable Growth. Investment through its £60 million Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge is already establishing the UK as a leading innovator in smart and sustainable plastic packaging solutions, and the aim now is to promote business-led innovation and commercialisation from the UK with South African partners, harnessing their collective power to find more sustainable solutions to the problem of plastic waste.

Additionally, Innovate UK has also established the 6-year funded Global Alliance Africa project, which aims to build new and stronger UK-African partnerships to maximise the creation of inclusive market access, funding and investment opportunities through innovation knowledge transfer. This also aligns with the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) objectives by building stronger local innovation ecosystems and enhanced UK-Africa collaborations that lead to self-sustaining economic growth in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa by the potential of innovation to meet current and future socio-economic challenges.

South Africa

South Africa, with a population of around 60 million, has a well-established plastic packaging production and treatment sector. It generates approximately 800,000 tonnes per year of mismanaged waste plastic. The country has the necessary scale and infrastructure to benefit from innovative solutions for plastic waste. Additionally, South Africa has a highly active informal waste sector, which reportedly supplies between 80% and 90% of plastic packaging for recycling.

In 2019, virgin polymers accounted for 82% of polymer consumption. However, the implementation of the EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) scheme in 2021 will create market demand for high-quality recyclate and collected recyclables. Disruptive new business models such as reuse, and refill systems are gaining momentum. South Africa has demonstrated its readiness to embrace new approaches to reduce plastic packaging waste.

The South African Plastics Pact was established in January 2020 with support from WRAP. Over 40 major business and organisations members across the value chain, including Coca Cola, Unilever and Danone signed up to a joint set of ambitious targets and published a Roadmap to drive change by 2025. As such, there are various opportunities for UK businesses to engage with stakeholders across the value chain to collaborate on solutions for a well-integrated formal and informal circular plastics economy, generating high quality, valuable plastic material in South Africa.

Innovate UK’s role

Through our engagement with UK companies involved in the SSPP Challenge, Innovate UK knows that a number of SMEs from the UK plastic packaging supply chain are interested in exploring and understanding the South African market.

Innovate UK will deliver the GEM in February 2025. A group of UK experts will meet with key stakeholders from private and public sector organisations in South Africa to better understand the plastics supply and innovation landscape and explore the potential for collaboration in the sector. The GEM will focus on Flexible film packs including small formats, Reusable packaging and refill business models, Collecting, cleaning, decontaminating, sorting, separating and end market development.

The primary outcome of the GEM will be to provide evidence to support public/private funding in the UK and to explore opportunities for the UK to collaborate with the best South African organisations and companies.

Mission objectives

This Global Expert Mission will focus on how UK innovators can collaborate with South African partners to improve mechanisms to collect, recycle and valorise plastic packaging, excluding incineration. The mission will look at synergy between South Africa and the UK for collaboration to enhance the circular supply chains that reduce the carbon intensity of plastic packaging and develop solutions that underpin the Indian Plastic Pact targets:

• Tackle unnecessary and problematic single-use plastic packaging.
• 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
• 50% of plastic packaging to be effectively recycled.
• 25% average recycled content across all plastic packaging.

The objectives of the Mission are to:

• Help determine how Innovate UK can best support UK businesses more effectively and efficiently when considering sustainable plastics innovation partnerships with South Africa.
• Review key enabling technologies to support the UK’s plastics recycling industries, focus on chemical and mechanical recycling, reuse and refill, compliance and data management.
• Provide insights into where there are synergies in policy and strategy between the two countries to determine whether there is an appetite for further collaboration in plastic packaging sustainability, mainly related to packaging data and software tools, infrastructure and recyclability by design.
• Enable UK companies to better understand the South African market and key stakeholders in plastic packaging sustainability by providing UK businesses with access to material manufacturers, packaging manufacturers, product manufacturers/packer fillers, brands/retailers, waste and/or recyclers/reprocessors, local authorities (or government departments responsible for dealing with waste), compliance schemes (or their equivalent) and local software providers (if they exist).
• Identify challenges and opportunities for developing innovative technologies, products and services when considering collaboration on sustainability with the South African plastic packaging sector.
• Develop strategies for long-term engagement for new technologies, products and services.

Principal themes

A full life cycle, supply chain approach is needed to deal with the issue of plastic waste. Splitting this into two main areas: Upstream (Retailers, packaging manufacturers and brands) and the downstream actors (waste and recycling companies), as each needs different interventions and innovation solutions, however, the two are not mutually exclusive and need to work together to really achieve impact in tackling the problem of plastic waste.

Upstream Innovation: Rethinks products and services at the design stage to design out packaging waste. For example:

• Flexible film packs, including small formats Advancing refill/reuse solutions that eliminate the use of small format sachets/packs.
• • Design solutions to ensure recyclability
  • Innovations that reduce the need for multilayer laminated packs e.g., monolayer materials to replace multilayer materials.
  • New reusable packaging design solutions to replace non-recyclable or single-use packs, with a focus on urban areas.

• Reusable packaging and refill business models

Downstream Innovation: Affects a product or material after its first use. For example:

• Flexible film packs, including small formats
  • New, sustainable models for the collection, sorting and recycling of flexible packaging and small format packs and sachets.
•  Collecting, cleaning, decontaminating, sorting, separating
  • New technology or innovations to support the informal waste sector with a focus on transparent pricing, traceability and inclusion.
  • Technology to reduce contamination, sorting, separation or recycling for rigid plastic or flexible plastic packaging that is appropriate for the context (for example, small scale, low cost, small footprint, modular).
•  End Market Development
  • Innovative recycling and sorting technology to overcome barriers to greater use of recycled plastics in new and existing applications, opening high-value end markets.

About Global Expert Missions

GEMs are funded by Innovate UK and designed to build international collaborations with governments, societies, enterprises, institutions, and people from every corner of the globe. With global challenges requiring international perspectives, the programme aims to support the UK government’s ambition to be the international partner of choice and a global hub for innovation by 2035.