Design Principles

Flexible packaging includes a wide range of formats and elements, with each structure and combination of elements designed to meet specific packaging functionalities. For example, some products demand gas and moisture barrier, others stiffness.

But even with these specific functionality requirements, there are some generic sustainable design principles that can be followed to support designing flexible packaging for a circular economy.

In the first instance, CEFLEX advocates the collection of all flexible packaging for recycling.

Followed by sorting and recycling the mono-material streams (mono-PE and mono-PP), over polyolefin mixes, over mixed plastics (including flexibles), over mixed materials. It is easier to recycle mono-material flexible packaging and their use contributes to improved quality of recycled materials. A clear preference exists as a central pillar of the Designing for a Circular Economy guidelines.

Diagram showing Preference for plastic recycling streams from post-consumer polyolefin-based flexible packaging

Designing for recyclability

Designing for recyclability will be aided by the development and harmonisation of collection, sorting and recycling facilities throughout Europe as we transition to a circular economy.

When flexible packaging was not widely collected for recycling at end-of-life, it made good business sense for packaging design to focus simply on providing the required functionality with minimum resource use, thereby minimising product and packaging waste.

This remains key in a circular economy, but an equally important objective is to design flexible packaging so that it will be correctly disposed of, collected, and efficiently sorted into suitable material fractions for recycling. These sorted materials must be recyclable into ‘new’ materials that can be used in market applications, displacing virgin material.

The packaging design process therefore presents the value chain with an opportunity to innovate and develop solutions to make flexible packaging circular by addressing both sustainable design and end-of-life challenges.

It should be noted that compromising the protective qualities of packaging to improve its recyclability will typically have a higher cost and associated environmental impact than producing flexible packaging which is not recycled but which delivers the required product protection.

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