Flexible packaging is one of the great achievements of the plastics industry, providing protection to and extending the useable life of fresh food, yet minimising material use and having other environmental advantages over alternative packaging. Now that plastics circularity has come to the forefront, the term “hard to recycle” is often used in relation to films and flexible packaging due to issues such as mixed material waste streams, multilayer structures and the inks and adhesives on PCR packaging that complicate or prevent effective mechanical recycling. Recyclability has become the focus for collaboration in the flexible packaging sector, given more urgency by the European Commission’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) plans which will require all packaging to be recyclable by 2030.

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