INNOVATION | FILM
The washing stages in the Ceflex project’s Quality Recycling Process for flexible plastics packaging
Below:
JP Mascaro & Sons’ TotalRecycle Material Recovery Facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania, US
make these materials capable of matching virgin polymer properties. Ceflex has also issued new design guidelines to help deliver a circular economy for flexible packag- ing. The Designing for a Circular Economy (D4ACE) guidelines have been developed collaboratively with the entire flexible packaging value chain. The Ceflex project’s aim is for the D4ACE guidelines to provide a catalyst for change across Europe: producing higher quality recycled materials is expected to support much needed investment in sorting and recycling infrastructure to make all flexible packaging circular. Focused on polyolefin- based structures, as these represent more than 80% of consumer flexible packaging in the Euro- pean market, the guidelines provide advice on the key elements of flexible packaging including materials used, barrier layers and coatings, size, shape, inks and adhesives. The Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF)
consortium has released a new pilot research report demonstrating the successful collection, separation and preparation for recycling of flexible packaging. The pilot, the first of its kind in the USA, was performed in partnership with JP Mascaro & Sons at the TotalRecycle Material Recovery Facility
(MRF) located in Pennsylvania and underwritten by the MRFF. The report, prepared by Resource Recycling
Systems, demonstrates that with adequate optical sorting capacity and peripherals, flexible packaging can be efficiently captured in a large single-stream MRF and processed into a commodity bale, known as rFlex, for reuse in a variety of markets while diverting plastic from landfills. The report also identifies more than a dozen end market opportuni- ties for the recycled material. Building products like roofing materials represent the highest volume and most immediate end market opportunities. Other high-volume opportunities for using rFlex are pallets and railroad ties, where recycled plastic can serve as a more durable alternative to traditional wood. Within a year of installing sortation equipment at
the TotalRecycle MRF, four of the five sortation performance goals established for the pilot demon- stration were achieved, and the program continues to progress towards achieving the fifth goal. The five pilot performance goals include a reduction of the amount of recyclate going into fibre products, even with increased flexible packaging in feedstocks, as well as minimising paper in the new rFlex product bale. The Netherlands Institute for Sustainable
Packaging (KIDV) has published Multilayer flexible packaging in a circular economy, a roadmap document that contains a technical examination of current and future developments pertaining to the design and recycling of multilayer flexible plastic packaging materials. The KIDV illustrates the technical dilemmas and presents eight possible solutions for making laminate packaging materials more circular, along with their respective pros and cons. The roadmap will be used in discussions with the value chain. The roadmap is the result of collaboration
16 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | January/February 2021
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
IMAGE: JP MASCARO
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