Recycled plastics: British Plastics Federation collaborates with food industry on technical guidelines

24 Apr 2020 --- The British Plastics Federation (BPF) in conjunction with the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA) has released new guidelines on including recycled content in packaging. The inclusion of recycled materials in packaging can have environmental benefits of resource efficiency and carbon savings, as detailed in the guidelines. The guidelines concede that, under current regulations and technical constraints, it is not possible at this time to incorporate recycled materials in many types of plastic packaging owing to the rigorous safety requirements currently in place to protect human health.

F&B giants are investing heavily in recycled plastics in a bid to overcome universal supply and cost barriers. To “pioneer the shift from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics,” Nestlé recently committed to sourcing up to 2 million metric tons of food-grade recycled plastics and allocated more than 1.5 billion Swiss francs (US$1.56 billion) to pay a premium for these materials between now and 2025.

“FDF members are increasingly looking at ways to incorporate recycled content into their packaging in keeping with efforts to build a truly circular economy for food and drink packaging in the UK. These guidelines will help both businesses and policymakers better understand the regulatory and technical considerations that apply including those factors that currently limit recycled content when it comes to plastics for food contact applications,” says Helen Munday, Chief Scientific Officer at FDF.

Prepared through a close collaboration between the BPF, CTPA and FDF, the guidelines provide answers to questions about measuring recycled content and highlight important regulatory and technical considerations. The guidance is aimed at companies wishing to include recycled content in food, drink, cosmetics and pharmaceutical packaging. It is also designed to help policymakers better understand the sector-specific issues.Studies have shown that recycled materials in packaging can improve resource efficiency and carbon savings.

Life cycle assessments
The level of resources and carbon saved is dependent on the level of recycled content incorporated alongside the application of packaging and the recovery method employed, the guidelines indicate. Detailed life cycle assessments (LCA) on specific applications can provide the stated savings.

To illustrate the level of environmental benefit of using recycled materials, the guidelines point to a study by Accorsi, Versari and Manzini (2015) that demonstrates the carbon saving of a PET bottle for olive oil with levels of 0 to 50 percent recycled material. The carbon footprint (per kg CO2 equivalent) per 1 liter of 0 percent recycled content is 0.225, compared with 0.155 for 50 percent recycled content, a saving of 31 percent kg CO2 equivalent.

Additional environmental benefits of incorporating recycled materials in plastic packaging are that they reduce the demand for virgin raw materials and give materials another life and use, the guidelines state.

The guidelines go on to advise that it is not necessary to communicate the percentage of recycled content on packaging although businesses may choose to do so voluntarily. “Companies choosing to label should be mindful of the general legal requirement for labeling to be accurate and not misleading,” the guidelines read. The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) standard 14021: 2016 “Environmental labels and declarations — Self-declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labeling)” should be referred to for further direction.

UK Plastics Tax
Innova Market Insights pegged “Plastics come full circle” as its second top packaging trend for 2020. As circular economy targets loom on the horizon, the incorporation of recycled plastics into packaging is on the rise. The UK government will introduce a Plastic Packaging Tax from April 2022 that will be enforced with financial penalties to incentivize the incorporation of recycled plastic into packaging.

“We fully acknowledge that the government intends to stimulate the use of more recycled plastic in packaging through the introduction of a tax. However, for most plastics, the legislation governing materials in contact with food currently disallows recycled content. Many food producers will therefore be subject to tax, which is likely to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices,” David Bellamy, Senior Environment Policy Manager at the FDF, tells PackagingInsights.

FDF warns that the UK Plastics Tax could force up the price of some food and beverage products.“It remains our basic position that the use of modulated fees within a reformed packaging producer responsibility system would be a far simpler and fairer way to encourage the right behaviors around the use of recycled content than a tax. Firstly, such an approach would allow the monies raised to be directed towards dealing with some of the more challenging hotspots around plastics recycling and not diverted elsewhere. Second, it would be less of a blunt approach as modulated fees could be used both to incentivize progress towards 30 percent as well as encourage those that are working to incorporate even higher levels including up to 100 percent,” Bellamy explains.

Measuring by mass balance
Currently, there is no widely agreed method for measuring the amount of recycled content, according to BPF. Although tests can be conducted in a laboratory on a case by case basis to determine if recycled content is present, it is not possible to determine the amount. Across the range of materials in use, including all suppliers big and small, the only practical way of accounting for recycled content is to measure and audit a business on a mass balance basis according to polymer type across individual sites and not by individual stock-keeping unit (SKU), the guidelines indicate.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, mass balance is a consideration of the input, output, and distribution of a substance between streams in a process or stage. A method to match output (i.e. products with recycled content) with input (i.e. quantity of recycled feedstock) within a predefined system boundary (see below) and within a given booking period (usually one year).

UPM Raflatac recently collaborated with chemical company SABIC to produce the first polypropylene (PP) label film manufactured from post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic on a mass balance basis.

By Joshua Poole