With flexible plastic recycling still lagging across Europe and North America, Jean-Loup Masson, Circular Solutions Director, Alliance to End Plastic Waste, speaks to Circular Online about concrete actions that could finally move the needle.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste’s report, ‘The Challenges and Solutions for Flexible Plastic Packaging Waste’, analysed actionable steps that could help to solve the flexible plastic waste challenge in Europe and North America.
The report identified segregated waste collection and advanced secondary sorting as essential to improving flexible film recycling and quality of recyclates.
It also found that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) targets are critical for developing end markets and de-risking investment necessary for recycling infrastructure upgrades.
To understand more about the report’s recommendations, Circular Online spoke to Jean-Loup Masson, Circular Solutions Director at Alliance to End Plastic Waste.
Why is segregated waste collection essential for improving flexible plastic recycling?
Modern plastic film production requires very high-quality and consistent feedstock, which mechanically recycled outputs often fail to provide.
Segregated waste collection plays a critical role in helping to meet these requirements, reducing contamination by keeping different plastic types and grades separate at source, resulting in cleaner and more uniform material streams.
Advanced secondary sorting technologies, such as AI object recognition and digital watermarking, also have a crucial part to play in ensuring these quality requirements are met.
For post-household waste, the first stage of sorting typically occurs at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), but these are often overloaded and tend to prioritise higher-value materials rather than flexibles. Consequently, the granular sorting of flexibles which is required for mechanical recycling typically occurs as a secondary step at the recycler.
However, such technologies are expensive and difficult for individual recyclers to adopt. This points to the need for secondary sorting in dedicated Plastics Recovery Facilities (PRF) that can deploy these technologies at scale.
Why are EPR and PCR content targets crucial policy tools for improving flexible plastic recycling?
Without reliable, high value end markets for recycled film, there is little incentive to invest in the collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure needed to handle these materials.
PCR content targets help address this by creating clear, sustained demand for recycled material, giving recyclers greater confidence that their outputs will be absorbed by the market.
EPR systems help ensure waste management is efficiently delivered, adequately funded, and supported by the right technical expertise.
Additionally, they can help boost demand for recycled materials by rewarding recycled content use – through mechanisms like reduced EPR fees – and improving the competitiveness of recyclates versus virgin materials.
EPR and PCR targets, though essential, are not enough. Brands and consumers will prioritise safety, design, and performance when in doubt about quality. The quality and cost‑to‑quality of recyclates is therefore central to achieving true circularity in packaging.
For policies, such as EPR, will the cost always be passed onto the consumer?
The assumption that EPR costs are automatically passed on to consumers oversimplifies how these systems are designed to function.
EPR costs are primarily intended to finance system change and all costs are not meant to be passed onto the customer. Well-designed EPR schemes are intended to internalise the end-of-life costs of packaging and place stronger responsibility on producers, while also creating incentives to change behaviour.
By encouraging better packaging design, reduced material use, and investment in more efficient collection, sorting and recycling systems, EPR can help lower overall system costs over time. Many EPR frameworks also use eco modulation to reward materials and designs that are cheaper to manage, helping to offset initial investments.
The objective of EPR is therefore not simply to shift costs, but to build more efficient and financially sustainable waste management systems that reduce leakage, improve recycling outcomes and deliver better value across the system.
How does the design of flexible plastics need to change to increase recycling rates?
Reducing the complexity of flexible plastic packaging is critical to improving recycling outcomes. While packaging often has legitimate functional needs, unnecessary design complexity remains common and undermines recycling quality.
For example, reverse (laminated) printing embeds inks between polymer layers, making them difficult to remove during standard washing and de-inking. Simplifying material structures, including reducing multi-material combinations and barrier layers, can improve recyclability.
Design decisions should also reflect end-of-life pathways, with different recycling technologies needing different bale qualities. Mechanical recycling, for example, prefers single polymer, low ink streams, while pyrolysis accepts polyolefin blends and printed films if halides and oxygen contaminants (for example, PVC, PET) are limited.
Finally, harmonised design guidelines (for example, CEFLEX, APR, RecyClass) are essential to improve consistency, reduce complexity, and enable scalable recycling systems.
EN 18120, a series of standards providing harmonised criteria for packaging compatibility with collection, sorting, and recycling processes, should emerge as the technical backbone of design for recyclability in the EU, underpinning future PPWR linked recyclability requirements.
Why are advanced detection technologies so important to increasing flexible plastic recycling rates?
AI-based object recognition uses cameras and machine learning algorithms to classify packaging based on visual features like shape and colour. There is also digital watermarking, which works by embedding invisible codes into packaging during manufacturing.
These codes can then be later detected by specialised optical scanners on sorting lines. This makes it easier to accurately identify packaging and access product-level data, leading to more precise sorting and higher quality recyclate.
Scaling these technologies does require some enabling conditions. Upfront investment, interoperability across technology providers, and sufficient participation from brands and converters all matter to ensure enough packaging is ‘visible’ to the system.
With coordinated action across brands, converters, and technology providers, these conditions can be met and adoption can expand effectively.
Improving circularity in Europe and North America
The Alliance is developing a ‘Flexibles Thematic Program’ that aims to improve the circularity of flexible films in Europe and North America.
The Alliance’s Flexibles Program adopts a three-part approach aligned with the report’s findings:
- Market mapping and system design that quantifies end-market opportunities and quality requirements.
- Showcasing demonstration projects to build confidence in systems solutions with government, industry, and community stakeholders.
- Enabling replicationby mobilising brands, recyclers, and governments to understand what it takes to create and proliferate effective systems solutions across geographies.
We spoke to Jean-Loup Masson to understand more about this three-part approach and how it could work practically.
What is market mapping and how would it work in practice?
Market mapping is about identifying end-market opportunities for recycled flexible plastics and the material quality needed to serve those applications.
We do so by first assessing which applications can absorb recyclates at scale, the waste streams that are available for feedstock, and the infrastructure and technologies needed to connect supply and demand.
These findings then shape practical action plans that connect waste sources to recycling technologies and buyers in ways that make sense from a technical and financial perspective.
This market-back approach is essential because it ensures that any investments made in collection, sorting, and recycling infrastructure match up with real demand from the outset.
Rather than building capacity and hoping buyers will emerge, we believe effective market mapping involves working backwards from what the market actually needs and can absorb.
Circularity cannot be driven by what technological innovation makes possible. Demand, regulation, and brand strategies must actively pull circular solutions into the market.
What are some examples of demonstration projects?
In collaboration with the European Brands Association (AIM), our HolyGrail 2.0 initiative demonstrated the technical viability and business benefit of digital watermarking. Trials carried out in late 2023 and early 2024 showed that digital watermarks can reliably identify and sort flexible plastics, even when materials are aged, baled or heavily contaminated.
Detection rates of 95% and sorting rates of 85% were achieved on the first pass. The technology is now being tested in real-world conditions in Belgium and Germany to prove it is ready for commercial deployment.
We also support Nextek’s COtooCLEAN project, which uses supercritical CO₂ purifying technology to remove embedded contaminants from post-consumer plastic films. The technology thoroughly decontaminates plastics, removing absorbed contaminants without dissolving the plastic.
This makes it well suited to producing high purity recyclates, with the potential to meet stringent food contact requirements. If successfully scaled, the technology could play a significant role in advancing the circularity of flexible films.
The Alliance supported the launch of a demonstration plant in Lincolnshire, UK, in April – a critical step in validating the technology and supporting its path to wider deployment.
What are the key market differences between North America and Europe? How can systems be replicated across geographies?
The challenges of building scalable circular systems vary significantly across different markets, and a tailored approach is needed. Progress in Europe, for example, is primarily being held back by an unfavourable cost‑quality ratio of recycled materials compared to virgin plastics.
Although the region generally has well‑established collection and recycling infrastructure, the recyclates produced often fail to meet the consistency and performance standards required by end‑use markets. Low virgin‑plastic prices further constrain market expansion for recycled material.
By contrast, the United States faces an infrastructure gap – a consequence of limited EPR regulations and the absence of proven, viable end‑markets, thereby slowing down investment. The limited availability of collection and sorting systems, particularly for flexible plastics, hampers the supply of feedstock necessary to scale recycling efforts.
Regardless of geography, circular systems can only be replicated if they are supported by a functional end-market. Efforts to replicate and scale solutions to plastic waste across different regions must be underpinned by market-driven strategies that ensure recyclate outputs meet end-market requirements before investments are made in infrastructure and technology.
