The group will promote MRF upgrades and product design changes to facilitate higher capture of small packaging items, like metal bottle caps. | xpixel/Shutterstock
Led by the Glass Packaging Institute, a new initiative seeks to improve MRF sortation of smaller packaging materials that often get missorted and end up in the glass stream.
GPI on June 24 announced the Small Format Coalition, whose founding members include brand owners, equipment suppliers and recycled material processors.
“While processors work to recover usable glass out of the stream from the primary sorting facilities, there are many other recyclable materials left over that we need to divert from landfills,” said Scott DeFife, president of GPI, in a release. “Working together on a national level will allow us to maximize recovery, reduce contamination, and increase the value of recycled materials – whether that’s glass, metal, plastic or fiber products.”
The group aims to promote investment in equipment to improve material recovery, collect data that could be used to bring small-format packaging into extended producer responsibility systems for packaging, promote best practices in packaging and recycling system design, and more.
The initiative comes on the heels of a notable Closed Loop Partners study that identified specific equipment upgrades proven to increase recovery of packaging items smaller than 3 inches in size, such as caps, capsules, travel-size containers and small bags. The investment group also formed a group to work on recovering these packaging materials, the Consortium to Recover Small-Format Packaging. GPI said the new effort will collaborate with the Consortium.
Founding members of the Small Format Coalition are Colgate-Palmolive, Encina, GPI, Mars, Nespresso, Nestlé, the Recycled Materials Association, Silelco, Sol de Janeiro, Steinert and TOMRA.