Circular Packaging for Direct Food Contact Applications

CIRCULAR FoodPack aims to facilitate the circular use of plastic packaging addressing the most sensitive product category: Food packaging.

This sector contains 87% of all European flexible plastic-plastic multilayer composites (MLC) due to the high requirements for food preservation and safety.

However, these MLC laminates cannot be recycled by state of the art processes and thus counteract the circular use of food packaging.

Recycled polymers from far less demanding mono-film waste fractions underperform and cannot be used in food packaging, mostly due to the presence of intentionally and not intentionally added substances.

We will demonstrate the project results by production of high-quality recycled PE at TRL 5-6, using Sensor-Based-Specification or Tracer-Based-Sorting (TBS, SBS), deinking and thermally assisted deodorization as well as solvent-based or mechanical recycling processes.

Innovative designs of recyclable and food-safe mono-material laminates will enable the re-use in high-value film applications, with upcoming food packaging marking with deinkable tracers. This allows a future circular economy of food packaging, if TBS guarantees a sorting of food grade materials.

Product characterization, food contact compliance testing, LCA, LCC and business modelling will support and guide process development, upscale and design new packaging.

The approach addresses the scope of the call exactly, since innovative sorting and recycling solutions are applied to novel designs being developed.

That enables the re-use in the same high-value product sector by removing undesirable substances from secondary raw materials.

Addressing the annual 2 Mio tonnes of European MLC food packaging, which currently hamper the recycling of 17.8 Mio tonnes of food packaging waste, the expected impact on flexible packaging and food sector is substantial.

An interdisciplinary team of 4 RTOs and 10 industrial partners (5 SMEs) will finally implement the new circular economy approach.