First of a Kind Flexible Plastic Packaging Recycling Pilot Successful

(Photo: Sorting flexible plastic packaging at the TotalRecycle material recovery facility in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Credit: Big Foot Media, Courtesy of Nestle Purina)

The Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) consortium just published a report showing that their flexible plastic packaging recycling pilot in Pennsylvania was successful.

Those involved called the pilot the first of its kind in the United States. MRFF underwrote the research, which was completed with J.P. Mascaro & Sons at the TotalRecycle material recovery facility in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. The goal was to find out whether flexible plastic packaging (FPP) collected loose in residential single-stream carts could be sorted into a commodity bale for reprocessing into recycled-content products.

In the United States, FPP is the fastest growing plastic packaging category, with 12 billion pounds consumed annually, according to the consortium. Flexible plastic packaging includes single resin and multilayer bags, pouches, and wraps, the MRFF report said.

For the pilot, the TotalRecycle facility was upgraded with an FPP recovery system that uses optical sorters as well as the kind of peripheral equipment that is increasingly being utilized for automated sorting, the consortium explained.

The pilot had five performance goals:

• Capture at least 90% of FPP in feedstock.
• Minimize paper in FPP product (less than 15% by weight).
• Reduce the amount of FPP going into fiber products, even with increased FPP in feedstock.
• Reduce the fiber quality control staff requirement by a minimum of 25%.
• Integrate controls with the existing material recovery facility control system.

All of the goals were met except for the capture rate. MRFF reported a 74% capture rate in February 2020 testing, and said that additional equipment tuning and minor upgrades were in process at the facility.

MRFF’s members include Amcor, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, the Dow Chemical Company, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, Kraft Heinz, LyondellBasell Industries, Mars, Mondelez International, Nestlé Purina PetCare and Nestlé USA, PepsiCo, Plum Organics, the Procter & Gamble Company, SC Johnson, Sealed Air, Target, Unilever, the Walmart Foundation, and Westlake Chemical.

In late May, the Nestlé subsidiary Gerber introduced a new single-material baby food pouch called the IncrediPouch on their direct-to-consumer website. The pouch is accepted by a national recycling program.

Sina Hilbert, brand manager and sustainability lead for Gerber, told Environment + Energy Leader this week that the company is thrilled about the initial results from the MRFF pilot program.

“This early success means we’re one step closer to a future where all baby food pouches can be recycled curbside,” she said. “This also gets us one step closer to our goal of making 100% of our packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.”