At K Show 2025, BP&R sat down with Emma Samson, Marketing Communications Manager and Willemijn Peeters, CEO of Searious Business, to discuss the Elephant in the Room - Ring the Bell for Recycling campaign.
Searious Business
1. Despite €5 billion in investments and new capacities, recyclers are struggling. Why is that?
Because €5 billion sounds like a lot, but in context, it’s almost nominal — there’s been ten times that amount (€50–60 billion) invested in new virgin plastic production. Most of the €5 billion in recycling has gone into innovation and R&D, which is important, but you can have the best technology in the world and still fail if there’s no demand for recycled content. That’s the missing piece. Until we make recycled materials the default choice, recyclers will continue to go out of business.
2. The Global Plastics Treaty shows a big divergence: reducing production at the source vs. improving recycling and waste infrastructure. Where do you stand?
Reduction must come first. We can’t even manage the waste we already produce — and it’s still increasing. Recycling is essential, but it’s been held up as the main solution for decades, and that pillar is wobbling.
At Searious Business, we champion reduce and reuse first, but even the best reusable systems eventually need recycling. So we want that recycling to be local, well-regulated, and resilient — not dependent on cheap imports or exports to countries with weak oversight.
3. The PPWR is putting pressure on businesses, possibly setting unrealistic standards. What are your thoughts?
Frankly, the PPWR is not putting enough pressure on. It’s too far off and too weak to drive the real change we need. Europe could be the global leader in circularity, but at this rate, there might not be a recycling industry left by the time these measures take effect. If industry players spent even a fraction of the time and resources making things work instead of blocking progress, we’d be much further ahead.
4. What are some tangible solutions to this situation?
We need two big shifts:
- From industry: Recognize that supporting recycling is a business imperative. Commit to using recycled content and help create stable demand.
- From recyclers: Think less like engineers and more like entrepreneurs. Build markets, collaborate, and promote the value of your materials.
Circularity isn’t a technical challenge anymore — it’s an economic and collaborative one.
5. Could (and should) the EU do more to support recyclers?
Absolutely. The EU can use procurement policies, incentives, and stronger targets to boost demand for recycled content. But waiting for EU-level policy isn’t enough — national governments can act now, like France has done by heavily incentivising recycled plastic through EPR systems.
6. What happens if these challenges aren’t resolved?
We’ll see more bankruptcies, more offshoring to less-regulated regions, and less post-consumer recycled (PCR) material available in Europe. Then brands will claim they can’t meet their circularity targets, and we’ll go back to exporting waste — essentially undoing years of progress and becoming dependent again on foreign supply chains.
7. What do you hope to achieve through the “Elephant in the Room” campaign?
We launched the campaign to highlight the economic crisis facing recyclers — the elephant in the room that everyone at industry events talks around but doesn’t confront directly. We started with a goal of 100 signatories and already have over 105, growing every day. It clearly resonates.
We’ll present it to EU officials on November 7th in Brussels, before COP, because recycling can reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 60%. We want the EU to show leadership — and also engage national governments to act faster. The K fair was the perfect place to launch because it brings together the whole plastics value chain. Our goal now is to build momentum, get media attention, and push industry leaders to commit to real, collective action.
8. If you could send one message to the recycling industry, what would it be?
Treat recycling as a commercial business, not a technical side project. Stop waiting for regulation to solve the demand problem — create the market yourselves. And to the broader plastics industry: stop treating recycling as someone else’s job. If you don’t invest in it, you’re undermining your own future. Continuing to ignore this issue isn’t just short-sighted — it’s industrial suicide.