This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

Designing packaging for recyclability is an important part of building a circular economy. For plastics, structures that are designed with consideration for existing recycling methods can contribute to higher-
quality recyclate and help strengthen the supply of post-consumer recycled material in the future. Although it involves a thorough understanding of downstream collection and recycling processes, designing for recyclability really begins with upstream producers.

Beyond performance and aesthetics, examining packaging from a recycler’s point of view involves considering how the package could be collected, sorted and processed. Because mechanical recycling is the most widely available recycling method today, many companies are moving toward mono-material packaging designs that could enable higher-yield PCR feedstock bales in the future. However, mono-material structures must be able to meet the necessary barrier and sealing requirements of incumbent structures to be a viable alternative to mixed-material laminates and films. Balancing these performance requirements, equipment capabilities and consumer expectations of how the package should function can prove quite difficult for brand owners.

How can the packaging industry advance technology innovations that fulfill all of these specifications? Through their studies exploring how to build a circular economy, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has identified external input and breaking down silos as two key ingredients for a successful upstream innovation process. Brand owners know the type of product and experience they want to deliver to consumers. Suppliers understand the capabilities and limitations of different materials. Bringing various areas of expertise together through cross-value-chain collaboration streamlines and accelerates the commercialization of packaging solutions that deliver the desired experience for consumers while considering the post-use cycle of the product.

The growing availability of high-density biaxially oriented polyethylene is one example that illustrates how resin suppliers, film manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers worked together to bring a new PE material to market that enables new types of mono-material packaging. Working with biaxial film manufacturers like Inteplast, Nova Chemicals expanded BOPE-HD availability and capacity by running trials and collaborating closely with the experts in biaxial film production. These relationships helped refine the BOPE-HD formulation to meet converter and brand owner requirements. “Every step of the value chain has to work together in order to make sure that we end up with a product that meets the needs of the market,” said Latricia Fry, market and business development manager at Inteplast.

Market demands

The development of BOPE-HD began with an increased interest in mono-material PE solutions from brand owners. Motivated by NGOs like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, emerging extended producer responsibility legislation and consumer preferences, many companies have made sustainability commitments related to making packaging recyclable and incorporating PCR materials.

PE is suitable for a wide variety of packaging applications due to its moisture barrier properties. While HDPE has established recycling streams and is one of the most recycled types of plastics, the majority of flexible packaging films end up as waste. Store drop-off programs are currently the only consumer recycling program for plastic films on a large scale, and they only accept a portion of PE flexible packaging. GreenBlue, the organization behind the How2Recycle labeling system, reports that only 36% of program members’ flexible packaging qualifies for store drop-off recycling, while the remaining 64% is not yet accepted.

In light of its versatility and its developing options for recycling, PE is a common choice for mono-material packaging designs. When Inteplast began exploring BOPE, they started with linear low-density
PE but discovered that it could not meet all of their customers’ needs. The goal of designing mono-material structures is to replace multi-material PET and PE laminates. These materials demonstrate high stiffness and heat resistance, and LLDPE could not meet the same types of processing requirements. The market was demanding an HDPE solution.

Product development

Nova Chemicals started down a new path altogether when they began developing their BOPE-HD resin for tenter frame lines, as the process requires a different formula than blown PE film. To create the resin that could run on commercial tenter frame lines, including lines designed for biaxially oriented polypropylene, they had to create a completely new formula that would not slow down or limit production. As all operators work on maximizing line speed, maintaining productivity for the new HDPE material was essential, though working with HDPE in this process is technically challenging. To develop a functional resin that could be widely adopted, Nova formed strategic relationships with film manufacturers.

Nova and Inteplast embarked on a journey to test resin formulations and production processes for the BOPE-HD resin. The Nova team conducted trials on Inteplast’s tenter frame lines. Nova and Inteplast team members attended OEM demonstrations together to better understand how the resins could run on existing and new equipment. At Nova’s Centre for Performance Applications in Calgary, Inteplast and other brand owners tested films on converting equipment and shared feedback to improve the functionality of the resin.

Benefits of collaboration

Developing a new product requires lots of testing and many different iterations. The exchange of information and an open dialogue between multiple industry players throughout the process aligns everyone’s objectives, helping teams pursue the right research and modifications. “Any time a packaging design changes, there will never be a drop-in solution that solves everyone’s problems,” Fry explained. “Adjustments will always need to be made, and sharing feedback during the development stage ensures that we are all following the right path and narrowing in on our process.”

For mono-material structures, new films need to work within existing production capabilities to be competitive and profitable. Collaboration enables new developments that account for the manufacturing, processing and performance needs throughout the entire packaging value chain. “Collaboration really is the only way we’re going to be able to solve the demand for circularity when it comes to flexible films,” said Fry.

The industry must focus on creating accessible mono-material packaging solutions that provide an alternative to non-recyclable, mixed-material films. As the world comes together to increase plastic recycling and reduce plastic waste, it is important to start these system-level changes with existing opportunities like packaging designed for store drop-off programs and optimized for mechanical recycling processes. Downstream solutions alone will not be able to tackle plastic without upstream innovation supported by diverse teams and collaborative thinking.

Brant Wunderlich has extensive experience in the packaging industry and is currently the team leader for application development and circular economy at Nova Chemicals, a leading producer of polyethylene resin that strives to solve industry challenges and circular solutions for our customers and organizations across the value chain.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to [email protected] for consideration.

This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

As the January inauguration approaches — and with it, the prospect of new, higher tariffs — views on the potential impacts are mixed among the recycling industry, several officials said in recent weeks. However, market participants largely agreed that the implementation of such tariffs remains far from certain.

On Nov. 25, President-elect Donald Trump threatened hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico to take effect on his first day of office this month, saying they’re meant to stop drugs and undocumented immigrants from entering the U.S. During the campaign he also shared plans for blanket tariffs on almost all imports regardless of country, according to Reuters and other news outlets.

Even before the threatened increase in tariffs, major exporters in China and Southeast Asia started producing faster to ship products to the U.S. ahead of Trump’s inauguration, said Hannah Zhao, director of fiber at commodity pricing and analysis agency Fastmarkets RISI. As in many packaging sectors, the fourth quarter of each year is traditionally weak, but this year orders for paper packaging, such as containerboard and boxboard, suddenly increased to “preload” the price to the U.S., increasing demand for recycled fiber.

Similar dynamics are at play in plastics, said James Derrico, vice president of new business at CellMark, a large brokerage for recycled materials including plastic bales and resins.

Ahead of the tariffs, CellMark imported extra PET and recycled PET resin to help hedge against anticipated higher pricing, he said. “A lot of other industries have the same idea, and the reason we know that is because the ocean freights jumped up pretty dramatically on importing material to the U.S. that looked like it could potentially be hurt with tariffs.”

Derrico remained optimistic that Canada and Mexico would not resort to retaliatory tariffs, because the customers overseas still need materials. An increase in prices was more likely than a decrease in trade volumes, he added.

As Chris Goger, senior director of recycling at recycled materials broker Blackbridge Investments, put it: “Who knows how it’ll actually take shape? And so it’s kind of hard to make sense of it, but at the same time, you can’t just say, oh, we’ll worry about it if and when it happens.”

Fiber supply and demand

In the wake of China’s 2018 implementation of a ban on imports of scrap material, a policy known as National Sword, India and Southeast Asia have become prime destinations for U.S. recovered paper. These countries pulp the recovered paper and then send it to China for packaging manufacture.

India, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam combined to receive nearly 40% of U.S. recovered fiber exports in January-October 2024, according to U.S. International Trade Commission data. Mexico accounted for about 15% and China received just under 10% of the total. Canada received only 5%.

So if Chinese demand for recycled fiber were to fall, so too would Asian demand for U.S. exports, and “that definitely will impact the U.S. recovered paper market,” Zhao said.

In addition, tariffs on certain developing nations — so-called BRICS countries such as India and Brazil — would likely mean a slowdown in goods imported to the U.S. and further weaken demand for paper packaging, should they support an alternative currency to the U.S. dollar, she said.

Likewise, Mexican manufacturing of consumer goods relies on U.S. demand, said Derek Mahlburg, economist and director of North American paper and packaging at Fastmarkets RISI. “Their demand for importing containerboard from the U.S. is just going to go down, period,” he said. “And this is regardless of whether we were to see any kind of retaliatory tariffs.”

In general, weak manufacturing of consumer goods leads to decreased demand for packaging, he said, pointing to the drop in OCC prices in 2019 following increased trade restrictions during Trump’s first term.

“China is a huge driver of what happens to U.S. prices,” Mahlburg said. “There’s only so much decoupling that can happen really because of how much U.S. recycled fiber does get exported.”

Plastic dynamics

As was seen starting in 2023, widely available cheap imports for both virgin PET and RPET dampened demand for domestic RPET, which remained at a significant price premium. With tariffs in place, however, the opposite could occur, according to Marcelo Wasem, research and analysis director for PET at Chemical Market Analytics.

Although increasing tariffs on Chinese material would have no impact due to the dearth of resin originating there, “for Mexico and Canada, yeah, we have a huge impact,” Wasem said.

The U.S. is a net importer of virgin PET, and he said imports supply around 30% of demand requirements, with Mexico representing about 18% and Canada 6-7%.

“What we can predict at this point is that an increase in tariffs in those countries will have naturally an increase of imports from Asia,” he said, adding that 65% of imports come not from China but from South Korea, Taiwan and southeast Asia. The increase in demand would subsequently push up deep-sea freight rates, Wasem said.

Although over the past two years RPET buying on the spot market has increased only during shortages of virgin PET, Wasem said increased buying would push up prices for RPET but still could incentivize usage of RPET over virgin material.

“We have two components of demand: One is the natural demand for sustainability initiatives, companies trying to introduce more recycled PET in their products,” he said. “And the other component is directly related with how long or short the virgin PET market is.” If the U.S. has any constraints on PET supply, “players will naturally move to the recycled market to get more volumes.”

Because of its reliance on the U.S. PET market, Mexico eventually would run out of export alternatives and be forced to reduce plant operating rates, he said.

In a late July investor call — well before the threat of tariffs — Jorge Young, CEO of Mexico-based PET producer Alpek, said the North American trade deficit for PET “probably peaked in 2022 with more than 1 million tons of PET deficit in the Americas. It’s been trending down slightly.”

With anti-dumping duties already in place for imported Chinese PET, Mexico’s imports originate mostly from other Asian countries, Young said, though “the prices from the non-China origins are not as low as China.” Nevertheless, Asian countries besides China still have “a relatively high percentage of their capacity that is again available for exports.” He expected Mexico to continue to face an uphill battle for market share.

For PE markets, Morales said a trade war would ultimately hurt domestic converters, “the consumer would pay, and it would hurt profitability of these North American countries, which kind of goes against the whole point of trying to make a better economy, not worse.”

Over the past few years, vast new U.S. capacity for virgin PE — and the resulting oversupply and low pricing — has cut deeply into demand for post-consumer HDPE. Recycling processors struggle to compete with virgin resin that may be priced closer to feedstock post-consumer bales.

However, Morales said, with emphasis growing on recycled content targets, recycled HDPE prices remain elevated, and “we’re setting ourselves up for another whiplash, possibly in 2025.” Even tariff-inflated virgin PE values were unlikely to be sufficient to incentivize use of recycled HDPE, he said.

 

This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

As communities grapple with the challenges of material management and environmental preservation, organic collection has become a crucial strategy to reduce landfill overflow, enrich soil health and promote a sustainable future in both the country’s largest city and one of its smallest communities.

Holden Village, an isolated retreat center in Washington’s North Cascades Mountains with fewer than 200 residents, and New York City, home to more than 8 million, have both launched programs for food scraps and other organics that reflect their unique environments and needs, community leaders said.

After years of trying to get an organics collection program underway in New York, the passage of the Zero Waste Act, introduced by Council Member Shahana Hanif and approved by Mayor Eric Adams last year, made residential curbside organics collection mandatory for all residents.

“Local Law 85 of 2023, which I’m proud to have authored, is a groundbreaking initiative (that) will divert organic waste from landfills, reduce harmful emissions, enrich our soil, power our homes and creates a cleaner, greener, rat-resistant sanitation system,” Hanif said in an email. “The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat — it’s here, flooding our streets, polluting our air, scorching our summers and sparking fires in our urban forests. Now is the time for bold, decisive action, and mandatory composting is a critical part of that solution.”

The city’s Department of Sanitation finished rolling out the program on Oct. 6, with residents of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island required to separate their food scraps into a separate bin from their trash and recycling for curbside collection. Service had already been implemented for Queens and Brooklyn in the last two years.

With all five boroughs of New York now participating, New York now has the nation’s largest residential curbside organics program. Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the sanitation department, said previous attempts included obstacles like bin requirements and signup requirements that discouraged participation.

“The Adams Administration set out to eliminate those obstacles and launched the nation’s largest and easiest curbside composting program,” he wrote in an email. “There’s no signup required, no requirement to use a specific bin and no confusion about pickup dates. Residents simply put their material out on their recycling day in a sealed bin, with a liner if they choose, and we pick it up and turn it into compost or renewable energy.”

Holden Village, a retreat and tourist community rooted in the Lutheran tradition, has been recycling and composting since the 1970s but wanted a larger, more reliable compost process, said Nathan McClure, who currently serves as Holden’s “garbologist.” The community last year upgraded to an enclosed, aerated bunker composting system from Green Mountain Technologies, partly in response to high disposal costs. All of its food scraps go into compost for local landscaping and ecosystem restoration.

“Holden Village has clearly demonstrated that if there is the will, there is a way to make recycling happen,” Rik Langendoen, director of environmental services at Green Mountain, said in a written statement. “They are a great role model for every community.”

Van Calvez, Green Mountain Technologies’ composting systems engineer who designed the system at Holden Village, has worked with both small communities and large municipal-built systems for cities. Whether looking at Holden Village or New York’s process, each approaches composting in the same way, only the size is different.

“The biological processes for facilitating a hot, aerobic composting process are the same regardless of scale,” he said. “However, the equipment and infrastructure needed varies considerably. The type of technology that is needed for a small community scale is entirely different than what is needed at a bigger municipal scale.”

Size matters

New York studied other successful programs in North America and learned that one of the keys to success was an early emphasis on yard trimmings, as residents already separate them from trash.

“This is one of the reasons we launched curbside composting in the early fall … when many residents are getting rid of leaves,” Gragnani said. “Of course, we accept all food and yard waste, and we continue to remind New Yorkers, ‘if you cook it or grow it, you can throw it.’”

While participation is mandatory, the department is focused on education at first and will begin issuing summonses for noncompliance in April. Fines for buildings with one to eight units start at $25 for the first offense, increase to $50 for the second offense, and rise to $100 for the third and any subsequent infractions. Meanwhile, larger buildings face fines starting at $100 for the first violation, escalating thereafter.

“Some material collected is composted while some goes to anaerobic digesters, but all compostable material is put to beneficial use,” Gragnani said. “Biogas produced in the digestion process and used to heat local homes and businesses takes the place of methane that would otherwise be fracked. This is a beneficial use for this material, far, far better than transporting it to landfill, where it would release methane into the atmosphere.”

The Staten Island Compost facility has produced nearly 42 million pounds of finished compost per year over the last several years. Historically, about 60% of the finished compost is sold to landscapers and 40% is given away to community groups, parks, residents and others, including free givebacks at the facility and in Brooklyn.

“We have several new contracts that, in light of the program’s recent citywide expansion, are diversifying where we send organic material collected and preventing overburdening one neighborhood,” Gragnani said. “And in light of the recent expansion, we are drastically increasing the number of districts whose material becomes composted while decreasing the number of districts sending material to anaerobic digesters.”

The program, though still facing some challenges from residents who are new to organics sorting, has been performing well since implementation.

In fiscal year 2024, which concluded on June 30, New York City collected around 130,000 tons of organic material, according to the sanitation department. This marked an increase of over 23% compared to the previous year, attributed mostly to the organics collected through the curbside program in Brooklyn and Queens. That number is expected to reach over 200,000 tons next year with the program now running in all five boroughs.

“We are fully dedicated to educating the community about this issue,” Gragnani said. “We remain optimistic and have every reason to believe that we’ll continue to see growth in the numbers.”

Small but mighty

In Holden Village’s dining room, where all of the community meals are served, any food left on plate is scraped into big trashcans along with any kitchen scraps. They’re then weighed and dumped into the composting system.

Originally, compost was put into pits dug into the ground, but being in a wilderness setting, that attracted bears and other animals. Three-walled bins also drew wildlife. The village began working with Green Mountain in 2009, McClure said.

“We had gotten a couple of their older systems called Earth Tubs, which are augers with a lid over it that spins around, so it was like a massive immersion blender to chop up the food waste and also fluff it up and aerate it as it goes along,” he said.

That system was in place for about 15 years, and last May the two partnered again on a newer, bigger system using an in-vessel system of three aerated bunkers, comprising 18 cubic yards of space for food and wood fiber collected within the village. It was installed inside a utility shop to withstand the heavy winter snowfall.

“With this new system having much more space, we are able to get everything in and give it the time it needs to cook, to fully break down before we take it out,” McClure said.

The aeration system, which operates on a timer, optimizes oxygen levels for effective microbial activity, and staff monitor temperature and moisture regularly. Once filled, each bunker processes the compost for eight to ten weeks with minimal need for mixing. The finished compost is then distributed within the village and used for local restoration projects, including mine remediation and areas affected by forest fires.

Holden Village also has a comprehensive recycling program, with separate storage containers for electronics, metal, plastic, cardboard and paper that are then shipped down to various centers on the eastern side of the Cascades. McClure estimates that the community diverts more than 90% of its solid waste away from landfills.

“It takes a lot of hands-on work and a lot of community involvement with all of the people here,” said McClure, who is part of a staff of 150 that shrinks to around 60 in the winter. “In 2023, 35,000 pounds of food waste was collected.”

McClure keeps tabs on other organics programs in the U.S., and although smaller than most cities and communities, he finds ideas and tips to be more efficient with composting and recycling.

He credits Calvez with helping to fine-tune the program and utilize whatever the community has on hand.

“The reason why this system works for them, in my opinion, is that it’s custom-built, designed specifically for this application,” Calvez said. “This was really a collaborative design process based on their needs.”