How can we scale innovation in plastics alternatives?

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Efforts to tackle plastic pollution have long focused on three familiar principles: reduce, reuse and recycle. While these remain essential, they operate largely at the end of the material lifecycle, managing what has already been generated.  

Yet, industry experience shows that this downstream focus is structurally insufficient. Particularly where plastics leakage into the environment is difficult to prevent – and where intervention at the waste stage faces diminishing returns.  

Attention must therefore also turn upstream, where innovation in materials, processes and production systems can help prevent pollution further in the value chain. This is where a fourth R, Replacement, comes in. Not as a substitute for the first three, but as a complementary strategy that encourages the adoption of better materials choices, enabling both performance and sustainable end-of-life solutions. 

Plastic design is a key component for consideration in the United Nations process to develop an international legally binding instrument to address plastic pollution. ICC supports sustainability-by-design approaches and calls for harmonised principles and standards to accelerate the transition to a more circular economy for plastic. As global discussions continue on a treaty to address plastic pollution, practical business experience has an important contribution to make. 

How do we move promising innovations in plastics alternatives from technical feasibility to industrial reality? 

This question is at once technical, commercial and industrial. A material that works in a laboratory is not yet a solution. It becomes one only when it can be produced reliably, at meaningful scale and within an economic case that allows it to compete. 

For 140 years, Alfa Laval has helped industries move from invention to industrial reality. Through expertise in process technology and industrial equipment, they have helped customers scale biological production processes from concept to commercial operation. That experience is increasingly relevant as industries seek practical, scalable ways to address sustainability challenges, including plastic pollution. That experience carries a clear lesson: the distance between what is technically possible and what is commercially deployable is rarely bridged by innovation alone. Scaling depends on reducing uncertainty, attracting investment and creating clear and effective pathways for implementation and deployment of concrete solutions. 

The industrial scaling challenge for innovation in plastics alternatives 

A growing set of alternative materials – including biogenic and biodegradable materials – already exist at the level of technical feasibility. The real question, however, lies in whether it can be deployed at industrial scale quickly enough to make a meaningful difference. 

Producing a few thousand tonnes per year may demonstrate feasibility, but meaningful market impact requires much larger production capacity. Scaling a new material from laboratory conditions to commercial production introduces uncertainty along multiple dimensions: process stability, product consistency, capital costs, and downstream compatibility. Each of these factors carries risk and in early-stage industrial deployment those risks are highly correlated. 

This creates a considerable barrier. Investors require confidence in operational performance before committing capital to a first-of-a-kind facility and downstream manufacturers require consistent product quality before switching materials with confidence. An enabling environment also depends on policies and incentives that create the right conditions to drive investment and innovation in developing sustainable, affordable and cost-effective solutions. Overly complex requirements can unintentionally slow deployment, create uncertainty and discourage the investment needed to scale new solutions. 

The economics, in turn, must be approached realistically. Conventional plastics have benefited from decades of optimisation, established infrastructure and mature supply chains. A first-of-kind production facility cannot be expected to compete immediately on the same terms. The priority at this stage must be stable production, reliable quality and the ability to deliver product consistently. Cost optimisation comes later, through repetition, operational learning and scale. 

As a result, many promising projects stall at this stage – not due to a lack of innovation, but because first-of-kind industrial production carries technical and commercial risks that conventional business models are not designed to absorb.  

From supplier to partner – a different model to scaling solutions 

One way to resolve the scaling challenges is through closer integration across value chains. Alfa Laval’s partnership with RWDC Industries provides a concrete illustration. 

RWDC has developed biogenic, biodegradable polymers as viable replacement materials for applications where the persistence of conventional plastics at end-of-life creates environmental concerns. What began as a conventional supplier-customer relationship evolved into a close technical partnership. 

This shift matters enormously because it changes how risk is distributed. By bringing their engineers, process specialists and development teams together, Alfa Laval and RWDC accelerate learnings. Jointly, they tested materials, refined production conditions and adapted equipment.  

Importantly, this also changes the cost of failure. Early-stage failure, when managed collectively, is less costly than late-stage failure borne by a single actor. In effect, collaboration lowers the cost of experimentation – making investment more attractive – and accelerating the speed at which new solutions can enter markets. 

“Industrial transformation moves faster when expertise is shared early, risks are reduced collaboratively and partnerships are built with scale in mind from the outset.”

– Karin Forsberg, Vice President Energy Division, Head of Strategic Partnerships, Alfa Laval.  

Addressing plastic pollution will require many different solutions. Innovation partnerships that help bring promising alternatives to industrial scale are a practical example of what is already possible and what now needs to expand. The future global treaty can help provide the common framework needed to accelerate that progress.