Materials and recyclability
Whether packaging is actually collected, sorted and reprocessed into new material at scale, not merely whether it is theoretically recyclable.
Regulators have converged on an at-scale test. A material is recyclable if collection, sorting and reprocessing infrastructure exists in the relevant market and the material is in fact recovered in commercial volumes, not if a laboratory can recycle it.
This is why the same pack can be recyclable in one jurisdiction and not in another. Beverage cartons are recovered at scale in some member states and not others. Flexible polyethylene has kerbside collection in the UK and very limited recovery elsewhere.
The consequence for reporting is that recyclability is a per-market attribute of a packaging component, not a global property of a material. Companies that hold a single recyclable flag per SKU cannot answer jurisdiction-level questions.
Designing packaging so it can be collected, sorted and reprocessed at scale, and under PPWR a legal requirement graded from A to E.
The optical sorting technology used in most material recovery facilities, which cannot detect carbon-black pigmented plastics.
The UK methodology that grades packaging red, amber or green and adjusts pEPR fees according to the grade.
Adjusting EPR fees up or down according to the environmental performance of the packaging, rewarding recyclable design and penalising problem formats.
Packgine resolves your packaging to component level and applies the rules of every market you sell into.