Design Guide: Reuse and Recycling of Plastic Packaging is now available in English. Released by Plastindustrien – The Danish Plastics Federation – the guide offers advice for the packaging value chain to ensure that plastic packaging is designed for reuse or high quality recycling.
Plastic packaging, often discarded as worthless waste, is now the focus of a new design guide aimed at ensuring more of it is recycled and reused by private consumers. The design guide, initially released in Danish, is now available in English to reach a broader audience and promote circular packaging practices beyond the Danish borders.
Danish citizens have been increasingly diligent in sorting their waste, leading to improved recycling rates. However, a significant amount of plastic packaging still ends up as unrecyclable residual waste. To address this issue, Plastindustrien has launched a comprehensive design guide with guidelines to ensure that plastic packaging is designed from the outset for reuse or easy recycling.
DOWNLOAD: Design Guide – Reuse or recycling of plastic packaging for private consumers
The overarching ambition is to remove plastic from nature and incineration facilities and transition it into a circular economy, according to Christina Busk, Environmental Policy Manager at Plastindustrien. She explains:
– By establishing a circular system for plastic materials, the aim is to incentivize the use of reuse alternatives for packaging and promoting higher-quality and cleaner recycled materials. Ultimately, this approach aims to significantly reduce our reliance on virgin plastic for packaging purposes.
A Broad Collaboration
The development of the design guide is the result of collaborative efforts across various stages of the value chain, involving packaging manufacturers, fillers, collectors and sorters, recycling companies, and other stakeholders.
The guide was developed by a working group established under the Circular Plastic Packaging Network. The network is operated by Plastindustrien, and includes representatives from plastic companies, producers of labels, retailers, the City of Copenhagen, the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA), and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). There is also broad support for the design guide’s content from the major retail chains in Denmark.
This design guide is the updated and third version, following previous releases in 2015 and 2019, demonstrating the industry’s commitment to circular and responsible packaging practices.
This Design Guide was released in Danish in August 2023. The English version is only available digitally.