A Review of The Recyclable Packaging Design in Flexible Packaging Industry

Abstract

Currently, many reasons such as the rapid progress of technology, increasing population, industrialization efforts and the increase in the rate of unconscious plastic consumption negatively affect the world and the environment. Food packaging wastes constitute large proportion of today's plastic waste since they have multilayer composite structure such as PET, metalized PET (PETMET), Aluminum, PE, BOPP etc. Because of the different structures in composite packaging, recycling cannot be performed. In this study, conversion of composite packaging structure to both polyolefin and mono polymeric component were carried out in order to make the packaging structures suitable for recycling. There were several difficulties while developing mono material structures. However, these difficulties were overcame by using improved materials and changing production process parameters.

Keywords

• flexible packaging
• recycable
• mono material
• polyethylene
• polypropylene
• food packaging
• sustainability

References

1. Achilias, D. S., Roupakias, C., Megalokonomos, P., Lappas, A. A., & Antonakou, Ε. V., 2007, Chemical recycling of plastic wastes made from polyethylene (LDPE and HDPE) and poly-propylene (PP). Journal of hazardous materials, Vol. 149(3), 536-542.
2. Allahvaisi, S., 2012, Polypropylene in the industry of food packaging (pp. 978-953). ISSBN.
3. Bünemann A., Brinkmann J.,Löhle S.,Bartni S., 2020, How can sorting procedures for packag-ing waste be organised, web page: FS07_Sorting.pdf (prevent-waste.net), Retrieval date: 09.09.2022.
4. Anonymous1, Resources & Recycling, Retrieval date: 07.03.2022, https://resourcesandrecycling.wordpress.com/polymers/
5. Anonymous2, Difference Between Polypropylene and Polyethylene, Retrieval date: 07.03.2022, http://difference.wiki
6. CEFLEX Technical Report, 2020, Designing For a Circular Economy. Retrieval date: 07.03.2022, https://guidelines.ceflex.eu/
7. Directive 2008/98/EC on Waste and Repealing Certain Directives, 2015. Retrieval date: 17.04.2022 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/.
8. IFPEN, Everything you need to know about plastic recycling, Retrieval date: 07.03.2022, https://www.ifpenergiesnouvelles.com/

9. Faraca G., Astrup T., 2019, Plastic waste from recycling centers:Characterisation and evaluation of plastic recyclability, Vol. 95, 388-398.
10. Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L., 2017, Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made. Science advances, Vol. 3(7), e1700782.
11. Heller, M. C., Mazor, M. H., & Keoleian, G. A., 2020, Plastics in the US: toward a material flow characterization of production, markets and end of life. Environmental Research Let-ters, Vol. 15(9), 094034.
12. Hu, B., Serranti, S., Fraunholcz, N., Di Maio, F., & Bonifazi, G., 2013, Recycling-oriented char-acterization of polyolefin packaging waste, Waste Management, Vol. 33(3), 574-584.
13. Huysveld, S., Ragaert, K., Demets, R., Nhu, T. T., Civancik-Uslu, D., Kusenberg, M. Dewulf, J., 2022, Technical and market substitutability of recycled materials: Calculating the environ-mental benefits of mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic packaging waste, Waste Management, Vol. 152, 69-79.
14. International Organization for Standardization, 2006, Environmental management: life cycle assessment; requirements and guidelines, Vol. 14044, Geneva, Switzerland: ISO.
15. Manzuch Z., Akelyte R., Camboni M., Carlander D., 2021, Chemical Recycling of Polymeric Materials from Waste in the Circular Economy, The European Chemicals Agency.
16. Osterath, B., 2020, Cracken oder Einschmelzen, Nachrichten aus der Chemie, Vol. 68(2), 22-25.
17. Panda, A. K., Singh, R. K., & Mishra, D. K., 2010, Thermolysis of waste plastics to liquid fuel: A suitable method for plastic waste management and manufacture of value added prod-ucts—A world prospective. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Vol. 14(1), 233-248.
18. Pietrelli, L., Poeta, G., Battisti, C., & Sighicelli, M., 2017, Characterization of plastic beach de-bris finalized to its removal: a proposal for a recycling scheme. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Vol. 24(19), 16536-16542.
19. Plastics Recyclers Europe, 2019, Guidance on quality sorting of plastic packaging. Establishing highly refined packaging waste streams.
20. Crow, 2022 Properties of Polyolefins, retrieval date: 15.04.2022, http://polymerdatabase.com
21. Ragaert, K., Delva, L., & Van Geem, K., 2017, Mechanical and chemical recycling of solid plas-tic waste, Waste management, Vol. 69, 24-58.
22. Ryberg, M. W., Hauschild, M. Z., Wang, F., Averous-Monnery, S., & Laurent, A., 2019, Global environmental losses of plastics across their value chains. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 151, 104459.
23. Williams, T. G., Heidrich, O., & Sallis, P. J., 2010, A case study of the open-loop recycling of mixed plastic waste for use in a sports-field drainage system. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 55(2), 118- 128.
24. Zhu Z., Liu W., Ye S., Batista L., 2022, Packaging design for the circular economy: A systemat-ic review, Sustainable Production and Consuption, Vol. 32, 817-832.