mechanical recycling

Plastic plays a significant role in preventing food waste. It has an exceptional ability to keep out air, moisture and bacteria that can cause products to go off before they’re cooked or eaten. And it’s often the most efficient and cost-effective material to package food for transportation and storage.

In a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group of 15,000 people globally, 83% of millennial and Gen Z consumers said they’d be willing to pay more for products that came in sustainable packaging.

The trials were held at Tomra’s recycling facility in Germany in September, testing the efficiency of Nextek’s technology in differentiating food packaging from non-food packaging. The separation of food and non-food packaging is necessary for meeting the requirements of the UK and EU Food Standards Authorities.

Nextloopp says identifying and sorting any number of pack variants from bleach bottles to milk bottles in any plastic type is a world-first, capable of transforming the way society recycles the growing volume of single-use food packaging waste.

Ineos Styrolution, which has recently launched several mechanically recycled PS products, claims that the material’s easy-foaming properties allow for the production of XPS foam packaging trays.