Dive Brief:
- Eunomia, Delterra, Amcor and Kraft Heinz recently launched a new film-and-flex-focused project, the Recycled Flexibles Demand Accelerator, to boost end markets for recycled film via tests and pilot projects.
- The accelerator was announced as part of a new report from Eunomia and Delterra that focused on the most promising applications for recycled polyethylene resin from household film, highlighting eight avenues in North America that could use up to 800,000 tons per year.
- Today, there are only 27 reclaimers in North America that mechanically recycle PE film, but less than half of those can accept lower-grade material sourced from households.
Dive Insight:
The longstanding question of how to handle film and flex has taken on new urgency, as coming extended producer responsibility targets, especially in California, could restrict producers’ ability to sell products in packaging that does not meet certain recyclability thresholds.
The report from Eunomia and Delterra explored how to create more end market demand for film and flexible plastic, looking at best end uses and how to drive incentives, beyond just trying to match virgin plastic on price.
“Comprehensive, well-designed EPR programs can drive dramatic increases in the collection of recycled household flexible plastics. But collection alone will not achieve recycling targets,” the report noted.
For example, California’s EPR program calls for a 65% recycling rate by 2032 for all single-use plastics, but less than 5% of flexible plastics are currently recycled. In Oregon, there’s a 25% collection target for PE film by 2028, ramping up to 50% by 2040.
However, The Recycling Partnership estimates that only 2% of U.S. households can recycle film and flexible packaging. TRP has its own Film & Flexibles Recycling Coalition, launched in 2020, which has given about $5 million to support 19 grant projects to expand end markets, improve collection and purchase equipment.
In emailed comments, Katherine Huded, TRP’s executive director of strategic engagement, also highlighted the group’s CalFFlex Initiative. That was developed alongside partners such as Delterra, the US Flexible Film Initiative, Alliance to End Plastic Waste and Flexible Film Recycling Alliance. The initiative is supporting eight end market grantees and is “actively sending innovation test loads of residential FFP from California to more than a dozen nascent or emerging mechanical end markets,” she added.
“Solving recycling’s toughest challenges takes all of us, and we’re encouraged by the industry momentum to work together across initiatives to drive the stronger demand pull essential to moving residential FFP recycling forward,” Huded said.
Looking to Europe for guidance on how to use EPR to boost flexible plastics recycling, the Eunomia report suggested that simple price parity between PCR and virgin resin was not enough of an incentive on its own. Instead, PROs need to subsidize and incentivize using recycled content in flexibles.
Quite a bit of flexible plastics are generated at the household level, the report noted, but there are fewer processors or end markets willing to take household material compared to industrial and commercial. Household film and flexible plastic are challenging to recycle because of mixed colors, differing resin composition, and contamination with food, adhesives and paper.
In addition, collection is a topic of much debate, with several states choosing to only collect film and flex at drop-off locations, to avoid damaging MRF equipment or creating contamination in paper bales.
Sarah Edwards, North America director and private lead at Eunomia, said in the report that “the hardest part of building markets for recycled materials isn’t ambition — it’s honestly assessing what’s technically and economically feasible and being willing to follow the evidence where it leads.”
Out of 40 potential end-use applications, the authors identified eight as most promising for household PE film: Horticulture liners, trays and plastic pots, rigid consumables, transit packaging pallets, rotational-molded items, industrial liners, impermeable construction membranes, agricultural heavy-duty covers and dark-colored trash bags.
The list of 40 excluded plastic lumber, asphalt additive and roof coverboard because they are already commercially viable in North America.
The commonalities of the eight are that they are not food-contact-sensitive. They are also tolerant of color variation, imperfections, and differing resin composition — such as mixed LDPE and LLDPE, and potentially HDPE.
In addition, those eight applications could possibly incorporate recycled household PE film at ranges from 5% to 70%. Horticulture liners, trays and plastic pots could incorporate the most, at an estimated 30-70%.
Overall, that means those eight applications could take about 800,000 tons of recycled PE film per year. Industrial liners, impermeable construction membranes and dark-colored trash bags make up about 75% of that potential, at about 600,000 tons per year.
“This suggests the largest opportunity for recycling household flexible plastics lies in film applications, even though incorporating this material into film applications also represents a greater technical challenge than rigid applications,” the report noted.
The report called on manufacturers to start testing how recycled materials perform in pilot programs and trials, because “in today’s rapidly shifting economy, a ‘wait and see’ approach to emerging materials often leaves companies lagging behind.”
This story first appeared in the Waste Dive: Recycling newsletter. Sign up for the weekly emails here.
