Flexible plastic packaging is hard to recycle — but it doesn’t have to be
For Recycle Week, Deputy Challenge Director Nick Cliffe discusses how the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge is making it easier to recycle flexible plastics.
It’s Recycle Week, which is the best week of the year for me because I am ‘that person’ when it comes to recycling. I cannot pass a bin, particularly a recycling bin, and not feel the urge for a quick peek (and possibly even a rummage). At home my anguished cries can be heard throughout the house if I find an empty shampoo bottle in the bathroom bin or a crisp packet in the kitchen recycling bin. Friends ask me questions about recycling or offer their frank(!) opinions on the current state of recycling collections in the area. I often get incredibly detailed questions about what can and can’t be recycled, and why.
I do my best, but recycling can be confusing. Some aspects are simple: for most households in the UK there’s no question about whether plastic bottles can go in the recycling, but things are much less clear for other types of plastic, especially flexible plastic packaging. For many households this is the only type of plastic packaging you still can’t put into your recycling bin. Although in many areas you can take it to collection points in local supermarkets, it’s the type that most often ends up going to landfill or incineration.
Flexible plastic packaging comes in many types: bags, packets, peel-off lids, shrink wraps, pouches, sachets, labels, mailing envelopes and bubble-wrap to name but a few. Why, when there seems to be more and more of it, does it seem so hard to recycle?
There are lots of advantages to flexible packaging. It tends to be lightweight; the pouch that washing tablets come in uses a lot less plastic than a heavy rigid tub. It can be given a wide range of properties, from resealable cheese packets to layering different types of plastic to give your food a longer life. But all these different formats and structures mean that it’s hard to sort them for recycling and tricky to recycle them if they are collected.
The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge is supporting lots of projects that are seeking solutions to the challenges of flexible packaging, with the aim of making them as easily and widely recycled as plastic bottles.
We’re working with the Flexible Packaging Fund to find the most efficient and effective way to collect flexibles from households across different geographies, from the inner city to rural areas. We’re working with CEFLEX to test different types of flexible packaging for their recyclability and how easily they can be sorted from each other and from other types of plastic waste.
In the next couple of weeks, we will be launching a design-based competition calling for ideas for the best way to collect flexible packaging in the home, so it’s stored safely, doesn’t take up too much space and is easily made ready for collection.
We’re also funding lots of business-led projects. One is developing a brand-new recycling process which can remove the ink used to brand and label flexible packaging so it can become high quality recycled plastic. Another is finding ways to make flexible packaging from just one type of plastic, but with the all the performance benefits of using multiple layers of different plastics. We’re funding several projects which are developing new types of flexible material that can be eaten or simply dissolved during use for applications like stock cubes or toothpaste.
Our large Demonstrator programme is supporting a flexible packaging recycling plant which will use a brand-new sorting system called BOSS-2D (Baffled Oscillation Separation System) to separate the different types of film and flexible packaging. Watch the video below to find out more.
All of these projects and many more are working towards making flexible packaging recycling a reality. The Smart Sustainable Plastic Challenge is at the heart of this effort, funding, supporting and connecting people to drive it forward until flexibles are as easy to recycle as plastic bottles.
Until then I’ll keep looking in bins and I’ll keep finding flexibles, but hopefully not for very much longer.
Want to know more?
The Smart Sustainable Packaging Challenge is supported by the UKRI Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) and delivered by Innovate UK. ISCF addresses the big societal challenges being faced by UK businesses today, backed by £2.6 billion of public money, with £3 billion in matched funding from the private sector. You can read more about what we do here.
