CIRCULAR FoodPack – Circular packaging for direct food contact applications

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Welcome to the 2nd newsletter of our EU-project CIRCULAR FoodPack!

Recently, the consortium met for the first time in person, celebrating its one-year anniversary at the General Assembly meeting in Paris. The French group SUEZ, one of the leading providers of environmental services in the waste management and water sectors in the EU, had invited the other project partners to their premises in Le Peq and Croissy-sur-Seine in Greater Paris for the two-days-meeting.

In addition to presenting and discussing progress of the project, the partners took the opportunity to visit SUEZ' research centre in Croissy-sur-Seine – an important site for the project.

Read our story about the visit at CIRSEE Pilot Testing Hall and take a look behind the scenes!

Also in this newsletter: Find out more about current developments in EU waste management, and get to know the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform.  

CIRCULAR FoodPack visits CIRSEE Pilot Testing Hall

Here, at the International Centre for Water and Environmental Research, Virginie Decottignies, Head of the Advanced Recycling Department at (SUEZ) CIRSEE, and her team investigated the composition of European waste streams from Belgium, Germany and France. The aim of the research was to identify multilayer plastic packaging that currently prevents high-quality material recycling due to its multi-material composition. 

In the so-called PLASTlab of the CIRSEE Pilot Testing Hall, innovative sorting techniques are tested and new formulas for plastic recyclates are generated. The aim is to increase the quality and quantity of recyclates from plastic packaging in order to reduce the ecological footprint of industrial customers and to live up to the goal of a circular economy. Currently, a good 25 % of all plastic waste (average recycling rate of flexible and rigid plastics) generated in France goes back to the packaging industry in recycled form.

In the laboratory, the plastics are first examined for quality and properties, and subsequently, recyclates that meet the specified standards of the customers are produced in a second step. Four different plastics are treated here: Polyethylene Terephtalate (PET), which is used for the production of water bottles, Polypropylene (PP), which is also used in plastic bottles as well as in various food packaging, Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), which is utilized in windows and piping systems, and Polyethylene (PE), which are contained in various films for food packaging, among other things.

The plant in the PLASTlab washes and shreds the plastic waste and extrudes it into plastic pellets. The quality of the pellets is tested and improved by adapting the formulas, for example by adding various additives. The quality is characterised and checked chemically, thermally and mechanically. When the right formula for the recyclates has been identified, it is sent to a large plant so that it can be produced in industrial scale.

Our project partner Virginie Decottignies (left in the left picture below) and her team gave us a guided tour through the testing hall. This was very insightful for the project coordinator Dr Esra Kücükpinar, Materials Development at Fraunhofer IVV (right in the left picture below), and the rest of the consortium. In the PlastLab, the main focus was on the working steps of the extruder, the core of the laboratory: The plastics are melted, mixed with additives if necessary, formed into a filament via a die and then cooled in a water bath. About 15 kg of plastics can be processed here in one run on a labortory scale. An industrial plant can handle four tonnes.

In the so-called densifier (right picture above) the prepared, shredded films (“flakes”) are compressed after being heated. In contrast to other extruders, the material is treated rather gently here at relatively low temperatures (up to 95 degrees Celsius) and is also only extruded for a relatively short time. The resulting pellets are easier to process, says Virginie Decottignies.

Later on, Virginie Decottignies shows an exemplary film made out of recyclates from industrially used LDPE (low density polyethylene) films and raises interest among project partners Dr Martin Schlummer, Fraunhofer IVV, and Dr Ralf Leineweber, Siegwerk Druckfarben AG & Co. KGaA (from left to right).

Because with regard to post-consumer plastic (food) packaging it is relatively difficult to obtain transparent films due to the printing inks. In the recycling process cascades in CIRCULAR FoodPack, a deinking process is foreseen to reduce inks sufficiently to obtain recyclates with a high degree of purity that can be reused in packaging for sensitive contents such as food and personal care products.

Manual sorting of plastic packaging in CIRCULAR FoodPack

Here at the CIRSEE Pilot Testing Hall, the SUEZ project team manually sorted between 60 to 200 kg representative samples from the delivered waste bales (140 to 740 kg) into about 20 different categories. The main focus was to separate food packaging for frozen food, baked goods, ready meals, fresh produce, fish and meat, dairy products, coffee, sweets etc. from non-food packaging such as industrial films, plastic tarps, collection bags and small carrier bags. This separation of food and non-food packaging in the waste streams is not possible at industrial scale at the current state of the art. For this reason, potential recyclates cannot meet the EU requirements for food contact materials and leave the recycling process at an early stage.

View of the work area during a characterisation action in SUEZ CIRSEE © SUEZ

The Belgian, German and French waste streams confirmed the global trend that the majority of flexible plastic packaging is multi-layered and printed, says Virginie Decottignies. Out of seven food packaging categories, four are made up of more than 80% printed films. For non-food packaging, only three out of eleven categories contain printed films. However, among the so-called secondary packaging for care products and carrier bags over 25 litres, more than 90 % are printed.

What happens to the pre-sorted samples?

Following the analysis of the waste streams, SUEZ provided the partners with samples according to the different requirements of each partner and their processes under investigation.

Washing and drying steps were required for most samples because the packaging was dirty. A washing machine with a capacity of 17 kg and the same detergents as at recycling facilities was used to wash the plastic waste. After washing, the packaging waste samples were dried in a special oven.

The prepared plastic waste samples were then either collected in bags and labelled with the name of the packaging category, the weight and the origin of the waste (EU country and type of waste), or shredded below 10 mm and then packed in bags for shipment.

Selection of samples from the respective categories for dispatch and further processing at the partners’ © SUEZ

The samples serve to test and develop odour and ink removal, as well as purification by the solvent-based CreaSolv® Recycling process. The non-shredded packaging samples were used for training and optimising the hyper-spectral imaging monitoring solution for determining the material composition of the multi-layer packages in the waste stream.

EU waste management: Targets, state of affairs, initiatives

Climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st century and future generations. A wide variety of industries has to respond to the diverse challenges like environmental pollution by an overload of waste and mismanagement of waste in general. To work towards a circular economy, the European Waste Framework Directive (Directive (EU) 2018/851 amending 2008/98/EC) sets basic waste management principles for all European countries, e.g. the Extended Producer Responsibility schemes, which are defined as “a set of measures taken by Member States to ensure that producers of products bear financial responsibility or financial and organizational responsibility for the management of the waste stage of a product’s life cycle” (Directive 2008/98/EC). 

The core of the Waste Framework Directive is the five-step “waste hierarchy” demonstrating the order of preference for managing waste, while the prevention of waste is the most preferred option and the disposal to landfill the least.

© European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment

To live up to the waste hierarchy concrete targets have been defined in the Directive. All EU countries are asked to take necessary action to reach them. Still ahead, by 2025, the preparing for re-use and the recycling of municipal waste shall be increased to a minimum of 55 %, and from there increased by 5 % every five years until a minimum of 65 % in 2035.

Recently the European Commission (EC) has started an initiative towards a targeted revision of the Waste Framework Directive (2023 WFD revision) and is currently working to improve the performance and effectiveness of the installed waste management including the EPR schemes as they differ significantly between Member States. In general, municipal waste streams grew larger over the last decades. And low recycling rates, as well as lower quality recyclates, are partly to blame for an inefficient waste-collection system.

In a call for evidence published in January and February 2022 and an ongoing public consultation, which is still open for feedback until 16 August 2022, the EC is gathering feedback and experiences from national authorities, producers and producer responsibility organizations, waste collectors and recyclers, households and businesses, NGOs and scientific experts.

Meanwhile, the Belgian recycling organization Fost Plus leads the way by announcing a significant change of its pricing structure and an even more advanced version of Extended Producer Responsibility  (19 April 2022, Five questions about Extended Producer Responsibility | Fost Plus). As of 1 January 2023, companies that place packaged products on the market will have to bear the cost of the waste resulting from their packaging. The implementation of the broader scope of the Extended Producer Responsibility is still open and has to be discussed with the regions. But this development indicates a clear direction for the future of the European waste management.

If it is not possible to prevent packaging, e.g. for sensitive products like food or personal hygiene, preparing packaging for re-use and recycling becomes the only way towards a true circular economy. 

CIRCULAR FoodPack contributes to the European strategy for plastics in a circular economy by developing new recycling cascades and novel packaging designs for high quality post-consumer recyclates to reduce the volume of plastic waste shipped to landfill and incineration.

Do you already know the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform?

Recently, CIRCULAR FoodPack has been registered as a good practice example on the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform. This platform serves European stakeholders, who are involved in the transition from a linear economic model towards a circular economy, to come together, share their experiences and expertise and find partnerships to scale-up effective solutions.

For this purpose, the platform informs about upcoming events and provides a wide range of know-how and tools to enable a sustainable and resource-efficient economy.

The European Commission initiated this platform in March 2017 together with the European Economic Social Committee as part of the 2015 EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy. The focus is on the involvement of all circular economy stakeholders (public authorities, businesses, trade unions, consumers, and civil society) to facilitate the transition.

Among others, stakeholders are invited to submit relevant examples of practices, innovative processes and learning experiences dedicated to a circular economy. CIRCULAR FoodPack contributes with its approach to enable the circular use of multi-layered plastic packaging for direct food contact.

See the entry of our project here.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101003806.

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