Approximately half of all consumer plastic packaging consists of plastic film, but only a third of that collected was recyclable in 2021. This is because it is made of several layers of different types of plastic (also known as multilayer film) that protect the products from oxygen and UV light, for example. This led Svensk Plaståtervinning (Swedish Plastics Recycling) to initiate the Circ Pack research project, together with RISE, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and the then FTI (now Näringslivets Producentansvar, NPA). The project has been led by RISE.
Circ Pack has investigated and verified the recycling possibilities for flexible barrier packaging. Players from across the value chain have been involved, from material suppliers, material converters, packaging manufacturers and brand owners to sorting operators, recyclers and users of recycled raw materials.
“In order for the recycling of these packages to become a reality, we needed to involve and understand the packaging industry. Why they use the materials they do, what functions the packages need to fulfil, what challenges exist, and so on.”
Rickard Jansson, development engineer at Svensk Plaståtervinning and initiator of Circ Pack.
Multi-phase projects
Circ Pack has been running for just over two years and has consisted of five phases:
- Market analysis, future trends and design guidelines for recycling these packages
- Sorting
- Recyclability
- Recycling manual
- Demonstration
Roadmap developed
Circ Pack has provided several important insights and has resulted in the creation of a roadmap towards recyclability.
”We have received answers to many important questions and can now guide producers in a completely different way when it comes to material selection, composition and design. At the same time, new issues have arisen that we want to look into more closely, hopefully in a new follow-up project. Among other things, we want to study printing technologies and design, as printing is a problem in recycling.”
Rickard Jansson, development engineer at Svensk Plaståtervinning and initiator of Circ Pack.
About Circ Pack:
Circ Pack was launched in late autumn 2021 and was completed in December 2023. The project was run by Svensk Plaståtervinning, RISE (project manager), IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and FTI (now NPA), and was funded by Vinnova as part of the initiative “Increased resource efficiency for a circular economy”. The project involved around 20 players from the value chain.
