ALWAYS RECYCLED: NAVIGATING FLEXIBLE PACKAGING’S MULTIPLE PATHS TOWARDS A CIRCULAR ECONOMY The diverse range of flexible packaging products has made it hard to find the best circular path for some of society’s trickiest waste streams, but a clearer way forward is starting to emerge for the industry. Steve Gillman speaks to Dana Mosora, workstream lead at the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging (CEFLEX) project, about why the sector is now getting behind a strategy that backs both chemical and mechanical recycling.
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he growing demand for sustainable production has seen the flexible packaging industry turn towards the circular economy to deliver environmental improvements without compromising on the functionality of its products – but developing the necessary solutions has not been so straightforward. According to CEFLEX’s Dana Mosora there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution considering the diversity and scale of the industry, but it has now become clear that any path forward must include both mechanical and chemical recycling technologies. CEFLEX is a European consortium of over 170 businesses, researchers and non-profits developing circular economy guidelines for the flexible packaging industry and they concluded that this requires a complementary mix of mechanical and chemical recycling technologies working together. “The objective is to bring materials back into the economy at the highest value possible,” says Dana. “More mechanical recycling can enable higher value materials in Europe, but as much as we expand this there will always be a need for innovations that remake polymers.” Mechanical recycling in Europe is already delivering robust secondary materials for many applications in film, injection moulding and compression moulding and, with the newly developed ‘Quality recycling Process’ by CEFLEX, higher quality polymers can be delivered for new demanding applications for non-food
Attero polymer recycling plant | 24 | Packaging Europe
flexible packaging. However, other regulated and more demanding applications like food and pharmaceuticals have struggled to find recycled materials with properties that match virgin feedstocks. “Chemical recycling is today the only technology which is remaking polymers and therefore we can have recycled polymers with the right material quality for food contact,” says Dana. A key part of CEFLEX’s latest position on the circular economy is to get the industry’s value chains behind all physical and chemical recycling solutions, from mechanical recycling, dissolution and solvent depolymerization to pyrolysis. While most chemical recycling projects are still in an R&D phase, the consortium predicts that if there was industry-wide support for these new solutions it could eventually create the required supply of circular materials that mechanical processes cannot deliver. CEFLEX estimates pyrolysis alone could offer 1.5 million tons of recycling capacity in Europe by 2025. Dana explains that CEFLEX’s new position is not about defining the exact amount of physical (mechanical and dissolution) or chemical recycling needed to achieve the circular economy for flexible packaging, but more about sending a market signal to speed up the sustainable transition for the industry. “We need to enable these solutions to develop as fast as possible,” she says, adding that this is about incentivizing companies to build more mechani-
Dana Mosora
