INTERVIEW with Plastic Recyclers Europe (PRE)

Andromeda Scoppio is a Regulatory Affairs Advisor for Plastic Recyclers Europe (PRE), she is the leader of the project’s work package that carries out innovative business strategies, design and production models for food packaging.

1. What are the main challenges when it comes to recycling plastics to use the resulting material to be in contact with food?

Recycling plastics for food contact involves significant challenges such as decontamination, regulatory compliance, and consumer acceptance. Waste streams often mix plastics, some unsuitable for food contact due to harmful chemicals or additives. Decontamination is crucial to meet food safety standards, and advances in sorting technologies can improve the quality of recycled plastics for food use. Moreover, plastic products should be effectively designed for recycling to generate the quality necessary to replace virgin plastic in the same application. Today the scarcity of high-quality recycled plastic is, in part due to the poor plastic product design for recycling. Even though multiple recyclers have already implemented technologies to deliver the quality of PCR requested by the brands, contact-sensitive packaging remains a challenge. Proper design following scientific and European harmonized criteria is necessary to meet the demand for post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics.

The European Union has strict regulations to ensure the safety of recycled plastics used in food contact. These materials must meet high standards, demonstrating their safety and quality for rigid food packaging. The ‘food contact regulation’ sets such requirements on the entire value chain, from collection to the final article. For starters, plastics need to be decontaminated during recycling and some specific requirements apply already from collection and preprocessing of the waste: specifically, this means that only separately collected material is suitable and that the plastic waste shall be controlled using quality assurance systems. To enforce this properly, traceability of the recycled material through the entire supply chain is essential and should be verified by third-party certification.

Finally, educating consumers about the safety and benefits of recycled plastics in food packaging can foster acceptance and increase trust in the recyclates market. Initiatives like the STOPP project aim to generate data proving the safety of recyclates and develop innovative processes to enhance their quality.

2. How can the plastic waste collection systems be improved to make them more efficient and circular? How will STOPP analyse them?

The efficiency of the plastic packaging collection systems and sorting practices play a key role in producing high-quality recyclates, such as the ones required for food-contact applications. Thus, it is of pivotal importance to harmonize and optimize these systems on the national and EU level to meet the increased recycling rates while ensuring compliance with the food contact legislation for recycled plastic materials. Currently, plastic packaging has two main forms of collection; either it is ‘home-separated’ or ‘post-home separated’ (also known as commingled). In the latter, the plastic packaging is disposed of along with the residual waste in a single bin, while in the first case, a pre-sorting action takes place directly in the households, where the used plastic packaging is put in a separate bin. However, the collection system can also vary depending on the type of application; for instance, some member states have a deposit return system (DRS) for PET bottles, which has been proven to ensure a higher quality of recyclates. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that design for recycling plays a key role in improving collection practices.

Design choices that align with existing collection infrastructure ensure that packaging is compatible with the systems in place, enhancing recycling success. Manufacturers should design products with end-of-life recycling in mind, using materials that are easier to recycle and avoiding complex multi-material composites. In STOPP, we will first conduct a mapping exercise of different countries’ collection systems while then investigating whether the type of plastic packaging collection influences the quality of the recyclates, by assessing their composition, technical quality, contaminants content and smell. This work will allow to provide qualitative and quantitative insights on differences in input materials coming from two different collection systems, namely home-separated (HS) and post-home-separated (PHS), and from different countries within the EU.