How to Design Plastic Packaging for Recycling
The quest to increase the quality of plastic recycling starts/begins in the design phase.
The waste management industry can only do so much if the plastic packaging is not designed/developed with the aim of achieving high-quality recycled materials afterwards.
Excessive use of colours, adhesives, glues, and multilayer materials all hamper the quality of material recycling. However, when considerations about recycling are already taken into the initial product design process, it is possible to produce plastic packaging that can be recycled over and over again. Therefore, Copenhagen has been an active supporter of – and contributor to – the work conducted in the Danish Forum for Circular Packaging to develop a design manual for recyclable packaging.
The initiative is headed by the Danish Plastics Federation.
Download the new design manual
The new design manual was launched in November 2019.
The basic rules of thumb for recyclable packaging are:
- Use monolayer materials
- Limit the use of colours, printing inks and glues
- Avoid product designs with inseparable parts