Circular Economy: Design for Recycling and Data Exchange for Plastic Packaging

Abstract

Circular economy is becoming a key way of addressing use of limited resources and environmental impact, but currently the use of plastic packaging is far from circular. One of the challenges that hinder a circular flow of plastic for packaging is that the packaging is not always designed to work with existing recycling infrastructure. Together with a literature review of recent scientific findings and policy documents, interviews were used to fulfil the aim of analysing the state-of-the-art and current data exchange practices of the plastic packaging value chain. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 companies that produce and sell products with plastic packaging (product producers), and 10 complementary interviews were conducted to cover a larger part of the value chain. With the recently introduced EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), the industry has an increasing focus in Design for Recycling (DfR). The main tool that product producers use for DfR today is DfR guidelines, but the study show that these can diverge in their assessments of products. The industry currently only have a small focus on traceability, but the PPWR will bring more focus to this as requirements for ensuring recycling at scale comes into affect. DfR and differentiated fees is a start but increased data exchange in the industry has the potential to improve circularity to a new level.