The Design Guide turns 30

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

In the three decades since its first printing, the Association of Plastic Recyclers Design Guide, an instruction manual for calibrating plastic packaging to best suit reclaimers’ needs, has evolved from a basic list of dos and don’ts, patched together by a handful of PET companies, to an internationally cited online litmus test of PET, HDPE, PE and PP recyclability.

APR, the owner of this magazine’s publisher, is marking the guide’s 30th anniversary at the 2025 Plastics Recycling Conference later this month. The inaugural APR Recycling Leadership Awards will recognize packaging designers, manufacturers, researchers and innovators who have made significant contributions to the guide’s mission.

The recognition caps off years of both tinkering and overhauling, said APR Chief Operating Officer Curt Cozart, who has led those efforts for about a decade with continuous guidance from APR’s many technical committees of industry scientists and other experts.

One of the overarching goals when Cozart began was to make the guide simple and consistent. For example, earlier guide versions used a group of seemingly synonymous descriptions, such as “to be avoided” and “detrimental,” for certain shapes, resin characteristics and other design features of a bottle or jug.

“But it didn’t relate all the words to each other — was ‘to be avoided’ worse or better than ‘detrimental’?” Cozart said. He and his staff therefore condensed and formalized the guide into a few distinct categories: “APR preferred” for best practices, “non-recyclable” for unacceptable ones and “detrimental” for in-between characteristics that wouldn’t necessarily get a package thrown out but did make it more difficult to recycle.

“We tried to move it to where people wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting in that category,” Cozart said, and indeed, several packaging manufacturers seeking the recyclability green light have complained to him about a detrimental rating. “It’s doing exactly what it’s intended to do.”
The APR team also worked to expand the guide’s scope to account for the capabilities of materials recovery facilities, covering every step of the recycling process from sorting to remanufacture.

The guide’s latest online version, unveiled last fall, allows users to search among several varieties of PET, HDPE, PE and PP and hone in on aspects of a package that range from the mundane, such as color and labeling, to the technical, including resin melt flows and densities. It then provides acceptable baselines for each as well as testing protocols and referrals to testing laboratories.

Taken together, the guide gives a packaging maker the tools to either tweak an existing product or craft an ideal one from the ground up.

“We’ve really come a long way from this kind of paper encyclopedia thing,” Cozart said.
Take Kraft Heinz, which sits on APR’s PET technical committee. With APR’s guidance, the company stopped making the valves in the center of its ketchup bottle lids out of silicone, which was labeled detrimental because of its density, said Chris Max, the company’s sustainable innovation packaging lead.

“We transitioned with our partner to a TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) alternative — it still functions the same, but it now floats and it is compatible with the olefin recycling stream,” Max said.

One of the design guide’s biggest benefits is time-specific documentation of recyclability, he added, which is a major concern in the world of consumer packaged goods in an era of lawsuits over companies’ recycling claims.

“It’s definitely moving in the right direction; it’s easier to find things,” Max said of the guide’s latest interface, though he’d also like to see a smartphone app version someday.

The design guide’s also helpful for nudging customers in a more recycling-friendly direction, said Tim Bohlke, director of sustainability at Resource Label Group, a maker of package labels and wraps. The biggest brands are largely familiar with recyclability requirements, he said, but “there’s thousands of other customers out there that we need to educate.

“Here’s really the gold standard of products that you want to choose from,” he said of the design guide. And his customers have responded positively, moving closer to APR guidelines for items like Paul Mitchell’s line of hair products. “They care because they know their customers care, they know their retailers care.”

Along the same lines, the guide has taken on a life of its own as a third-party tool for assessment and compliance, Cozart said. California’s SB 343, which put limits on the usage of the chasing-arrows and other labeling for recyclability, explicitly references the guide, for instance. RecyClass, a European nonprofit advancing recyclability across the continent, has also worked to align its own guidelines with APR’s.

And that increased reach comes with a little more pressure — “both a good thing and a bad thing,” Cozart quipped. So the tinkering and improving continue. Improvements in the works include translating the guide into more languages and providing users with more detail when testing results in a failure.

“There is no ‘done.’ It is a living document,” said Cozart. “Who knows where it’s going to go?”