A wrapper, in a bag, in a box

Every time I do groceries, the packaging gets to me. I buy some sweets, and they come in a wrapper, inside a plastic bag, inside a box. Three layers to protect something I’ll eat in five minutes.

Once a week I take the trash out, and every week I feel a little ashamed. The sheer volume of plastic one person gets through in seven days is absurd. And the strangest part is that nobody seems bothered. We’ve all quietly accepted that everything we eat comes in a triple layer of plastic, and that this is fine.

It’s not fine. And it’s not an accident either.

The recycling lie

Most of us do the same thing. We look at the little logo on the package, see something that vaguely suggests recycling, and think: as long as this goes in the yellow bin, it’s fine.

Sadly, it isn’t.

Packaging is made of so many different plastics, often fused together in thin layers, that recycling it is usually impossible. Even the plastic that can be recycled only survives a few rounds before it degrades into something useless. Worldwide, only about 9% of plastic waste ever gets recycled. The rest ends up in a landfill, gets burned, or leaks into rivers and oceans.

So why is there a recycling-looking logo on nearly every package we touch? That triangle with a number in it isn’t a promise that anything gets recycled. It only tells you what kind of plastic you’re holding. The famous green dot doesn’t mean recycling either. It means the producer paid a fee.

And it’s not just me being cynical. A 2020 European Commission study found that more than half of the environmental claims it examined in the EU were vague, misleading or unfounded.

Who sold us the lie?

This is the part that made me angry.

In 2020, NPR and PBS Frontline dug through internal industry documents and found that the plastics industry sold the public an idea it knew wouldn’t work: that most plastic could and would be recycled. They did it while making billions selling the world new plastic.

They knew early. A report sent to top industry executives in 1973 called plastic recycling costly and difficult, and called sorting it infeasible. A year later, another document expressed serious doubt that widespread plastic recycling could ever pay for itself.

Then they advertised it anyway. From the late 1980s, the industry spent tens of millions of dollars on ads, recycling projects and PR, telling people plastic could and should be recycled. Why? Three former insiders told NPR that promoting recycling was a way to sell more plastic. The man who ran the industry’s most powerful lobby group at the time explained that the public was turning against plastic, and the industry needed people to feel good about it.

Remember that triangle with the number in it? In 1988, the Society of the Plastics Industry created the Resin Identification Codes, the same codes that still sit on packaging today.

A 2024 report found an even more honest line. In 1994, an Exxon chemical executive described the industry’s position on recycling as “committed to the activities, but not committed to the results.”

So when you stand at the bin feeling guilty, know this: the story that let all of us stop worrying, just put it in the yellow bin, was written by the people selling the plastic.

Microplastics

Here’s why it matters. We didn’t make our packaging out of some cool, biodegradable material nature knows what to do with. No. We took oil from deep inside the earth’s crust, turned it into plastic, and mixed in a cocktail of chemical additives, some of which are known to mess with our hormones.

It turns out this stuff doesn’t biodegrade. It sits around for hundreds of years. Great.

And it gets worse. Plastic doesn’t disappear. It breaks into smaller and smaller pieces that end up in the soil, in the water, in the fish, and in us. You’ve probably heard that we each eat a credit card’s worth of plastic every week. That number has since been challenged, and the real figure is likely lower. But scientists have found microplastics in human blood, in lungs, and even in placentas. They’re inside us before we’re born.

So who decided this was a good idea? And who decided to keep doing it?

The rules are finally catching up

For the first time in decades, the excuses are running out.

On 12 August 2026, the EU’s new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation began to apply. It covers recyclability, recycled content, packaging minimisation, empty space, labelling and bans on certain single-use products. From 2030, only packaging graded A to C for recyclability may be sold, and a grade C package needs to be at least 70% recyclable by weight. Retail, transport and e-commerce packaging may be no more than 50% empty space. And tiny plastic sauce portions and single-use plastic for small amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables will be banned.

The greenwashing is getting squeezed too. From 27 September 2026, companies may no longer make vague or generic environmental claims without reliable and verifiable evidence. We’ll see how many “eco-friendly” labels survive the month.

Nobody decided. So we’re deciding.

Nobody sat in a room and chose to fill the planet with plastic. Plastic won because it was cheap, light and convenient, and because nobody had to pay for what happened after it hit the bin. Every producer made the cheapest choice, and the cheapest choice became normal.

That’s changing now, and it’s why ClosedLoop exists.

Most companies don’t overpackage because they’re evil. They do it because nobody ever showed them what their packaging is actually made of, what happens to it, and what a better version would look like. The big brands have whole teams working on this. The small producer shipping from a warehouse in Münster has a spreadsheet and a supplier who says “it’s recyclable, trust me.”

We’re building the tools that close that gap. They show you exactly what’s in your packaging, how it will score under the new EU rules, and where you can cut plastic without cutting corners.

If you make or sell packaged products in the EU: 2030 is three and a half years away, and packaging redesigns take longer than you think. Find out where you stand before your customers, or your regulator, do.

If you’re the one standing at the bin: you can’t recycle your way out of this, and it was never your job to. But you can share this with someone who makes the packaging.