Guidelines for industrial take up - Technical, safety and practical guidelines to support circular use of PE PCRs for the same flexible food packaging application again

The main objective of Workpackage (WP) 6 of the European Project CIRCULAR FoodPack is to demonstrate and validate the circularity of flexible food and non-food packaging. This work package focuses on three distinct loop scenarios to showcase how recycled materials from different waste sources can be reused in innovative packaging applications. It further evaluates the quality of post-consumer recyclates (PCRs) produced through the recycling cascades established in WP 3 and applied in WP 6. In “Loop 1,” flexible household polyethylene (PE)-rich packaging waste is targeted as input. By employing an optimized cascade of pre-treatment, dissolution-based recycling, and post treatment technologies, the quality of PE PCRs is significantly improved, enabling their reuse in film applications for home care and personal care packaging. “Loop 2” explores a closed-loop business-to-business (B2B) collection system for flexible food packaging. This closed system, combined with an appropriate recycling cascade, allows recycled materials to be reused in food packaging applications. “Loop 3” consists of two cycles designed to simulate the repeated use of recycled materials in packaging and to assess the impact of a second recycling step on material properties. This scenario focuses on food packaging applications and employs tracer-based sorting (TBS) to separate food packaging items from real household mixed food and non-food packaging waste. The sorted food packaging items are then recycled using various cascades developed in WP3, which are carefully evaluated and selected to ensure the highest possible recyclate quality for reuse in food packaging. In total, six packaging demonstrators were produced, representing three use cases: food packaging, home care packaging, and personal care packaging. At least three different laminate structures for flexible packaging were developed and produced using the PE-PCRs from the three loops described above, with contributions from project partners AMCOR, NESTLE, Fraunhofer, SIEGWERK, and Polysecure. These demonstrators showcase the value chain and technologies necessary to achieve and demonstrate circularity in flexible packaging. This deliverable provides technical, safety, and practical guidelines to support the circular use of PE PCRs in flexible food packaging. It includes sections on sorting, pre-treatments in combination with physical recycling, safety aspects, design for and from recycling, Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments, and market perspectives. Additionally, it offers recommendations for overcoming technical, financial, and regulatory barriers, aiming to enhance recycling efficiency, particularly for plastic food packaging materials. Note: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101003806.