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Flexible Film and the Circular Economy

Peter Fallat, Director of Global Design & Packaging at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a Colgate-Palmolive company, discusses how flexible films fit into the drive for more sustainable packaging.

Peter Fallat 2018

Packaging World:
What is your big-picture assessment of flexible films and sustainable packaging?

Peter Fallat:
One of the challenges is that the recycling infrastructure for plastics has focused so much on rigid containers that flexible films have been left behind. Flexibles are challenging because they typically involve mixed materials and can contaminate the preferred reprocessing streams. This results in those streams having a limited and less valuable end use. Additionally, the equipment at the municipal recycling facilities struggles to separate flexibles, causing processing inefficiencies. We need to create a clean flexibles stream that works well with infrastructure to make these materials as viable as HDPE and PET are today. To support this effort, Hill’s Pet Nutrition is an anchor funder supporting the Film and Flexibles Task Forces established by The Recycling Partnership. The goal of the task force is to define, pilot, and scale recycling solutions for plastic film, bags, and pouches.

For companies like Colgate-Palmolive, is this a problem in the U.S. or is it a global issue?
This is a global issue. The flexible film recyclability and the recycling infrastructure is lacking everywhere. Hill’s Pet Nutrition produces out of Europe and North America for global markets, and we share our SKUs across regions. We are trying to design packaging for global markets when the end-of-life solution for the packaging can be so different. This adds complexity for standup pouches for pet treats, for example, by causing us to use different laminations by region based on what local recycling infrastructure requires.

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