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Emerging Recycling Infrastructure to Address Flexible Plastic Film Growth

Innovations like artificial intelligence and chemical recycling could solve challenges with recycling flexible plastic film.

Advances in recycling technology could help to more widely incorporate flexible plastic films into curbside collection.
Advances in recycling technology could help to more widely incorporate flexible plastic films into curbside collection.
PMMI Business Intelligence/AMERIPEN, "2023 Packaging Compass"

Flexible plastic films are growing as fast as the challenge of recycling them, but sustainable solutions are available through emerging infrastructure, according to PMMI Business Intelligence and AMERIPEN's collaborative report, “2023 Packaging Compass.”

Only 1.9% of the U.S. public has curbside access to recycling flexible plastics, the report says, citing a 2021 report from The Recycling Partnership.

These materials can complicate the sortation phase of materials recovery by tangling and wrapping up in equipment, among other issues. Many community recycling programs have banned the collection of flexible film packaging due to this.

Instead, most post-consumer flexible plastics recovered in the U.S. are collected via retail drop-off programs, but consumer participation in these programs is low.

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