Packaging for Recycling: From Theory to Practice

As the world searches for green solutions, Mono-Oriented PE Films promote sustainability and recycling.

The struggle against climate change and environmental pollution continues to gain momentum, with public opinion leaders, multinational brand owners, and numerous countries stepping up to take part in this effort. Green products are no longer considered a passing trend, but rather an essential component of the products offered by leading companies. The plastic industry is seen as being on the wrong side of this trend, with its products consuming limited fossil resources, polluting the environment, harming the oceans, and contaminating the world’s nature reserves and forests. In recent years this industry reached the realization that if it wants plastic to continue to be the main raw material used in various industries it must take groundbreaking action, provide environmentally friendly solutions, and participate in the environmental effort.

The wonders of plastic  

Most of the plastic used around the world is thermoplastic, including films used for food packaging. Thermoplastic materials can undergo countless cycles of melting and remolding, which means that, theoretically, plastic films can be recycled without changing the product properties. Unfortunately, theory and practice are far apart. Recycling plastic packaging products presents considerable challenges, and these hamper the efforts to reduce environmental waste and pollution.

The challenges of flexible packaging

Food packaging must have the properties necessary for maintaining food freshness and protecting against pollutants and gasses such as oxygen and water vapor which can deteriorate the product. It must also be mechanically durable, fit the packaging machine, and catch the consumer’s eye on the supermarket shelf.

These are complex properties, requiring a combination of several materials, each providing a certain property to the final product. This is the reason why flexible packaging is produced from layers of different polymers which are incompatible and cannot be recycled together as one whole package. Moreover, it is important to know that the layers of the different materials cannot be mechanically separated once the film is produced.