Recycling the ‘greenwash’: Misleading labels leave consumers in the dark
· Citizen
Walk down any supermarket aisle and you’ll see it: water bottles adorned with leaves, mountains and promises of a greener tomorrow.
Restaurants, speciality shops and hotels regularly insist on green options to impress their clientele. Words like “environmentally responsible, renewable and recyclable”, “plastic-free”, “100% recyclable”, “ecofriendly”, “biodegradable” and “compostable” are doing a lot of heavy lifting on packaging these days, but the reality is many of these claims simply do not hold up.
Visit milkshakeslot.lat for more information.
This is greenwashing – when environmental marketing gets ahead of environmental reality, only to sell a product based on misinformed perception. It’s a problem for consumers who want to make better choices.
The fact something is recyclable does not ensure it gets recycled. Someone has to pick it out of general waste, sort it and transport it to a specialised facility that recycles it into an end product that can be used, while creating an economically viable market for it.
This is not available in SA for packaging materials like cartons and biodegradable bottles.
Some brands using packaging alternatives to polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-like cartons, tins and glass, capitalising on the anti-plastic sentiments, make unsubstantiated claims to get consumers thinking they are making a more ecofriendly choice.
Unpacking some of these claims
One of the most misleading claims appearing on water bottles and packaging is “compostable”. It sounds simple enough. Toss it in your compost heap and it disappears.
The truth is far more complicated. Compostable plastics only break down under specific industrial conditions: sustained temperatures of around 60ºC, controlled moisture and the right microbial environment.
These conditions are nothing like your garden compost bin, a landfill or the natural environment. SA has no widespread consumer-collection system to get packaging to large-scale industrial composting facilities.
What happens to most ‘compostable’ bottles in SA?
They go to landfill, where they persist for years, or they contaminate the PET recycling stream, causing entire batches of genuinely recyclable plastic to be rejected.
Compostable and biodegradable bottles cannot be reused or conventionally recycled in SA. They only decompose under specific industrial composting conditions that simply don’t exist at scale here.
A single so-called ecofriendly bottle dropped into a recycling bin can contaminate an entire batch of recyclable PET, effectively sending hundreds of bottles to landfill instead.
Similar problems plague “biodegradable” claims. While it is technically true that these materials can break down, the speed and conditions required are rarely communicated honestly.
In cold, dry or low-oxygen environments, like most South African landfills, degradation is dramatically slowed. Worse, when some of these materials do begin to break down, they don’t disappear into harmless nutrients.
They fragment into microplastics and release carbon dioxide, contributing to both pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The SA Bureau of Standards has published Sans 1728, which sets testing and certification requirements for these claims, yet many products on shelves carry no such verified certification.
Greenwashing doesn’t always come from bold, false statements. More often it’s in the details – or the lack of them.
Recycling symbols are placed on packaging that isn’t actually collected for recycling in SA. Terms like “ecofriendly” and “nature-friendly” carry no legal definition and require no proof.
A bottle made with 10% recycled content might use language that implies it’s fully sustainable. SA’s Advertising Regulatory Board is developing a sustainability code to crack down on vague or misleading eco claims; a sign that regulators are beginning to take this seriously.
But until enforceable standards are fully in place, the burden falls heavily on consumers. If a claim influences how you choose a product, it must be backed by proof.
Consumers deserve transparency, not marketing theatre. The good news is: SA does have a packaging material with a proven, high-functioning circular economy: PET plastic.
In 2023, PET recycling company Petco achieved a 64% collection rate for PET beverage bottles, surpassing the government’s own target. Every PET bottle recycled means less waste in the environment, less virgin material produced and income for the informal waste pickers who form a critical part of the collection.
SA National Bottle Water Association members are required to comply with strict environmental standards. This includes adhering to the Waste Act, contributing to a recycling levy, designing packaging to be recyclable and undergoing annual independent audits.
Bottled water has the lightest eco-footprint of any packaged beverage and recycling the bottle reduces that footprint by a further 25%. That’s a real, measurable impact.
Next time choosing a water bottle, ask a few simple questions: does the “recyclable” claim come with an indication of where to recycle it?
Is the “compostable” or “biodegradable” label backed by a recognised certification standard? Is the brand transparent about what percentage of its packaging contains recycled material?
The most sustainable choice is the one backed by an auditable system, not the most photogenic packaging.