Independent insights on packaging materials, printing, sustainable packaging and design
Recyclability matters, but it only describes what a package is capable of. What happens after use depends on a much larger system.
“Recyclable” is one of the most familiar terms in sustainable packaging, and for good reason. Moving away from structures that are difficult to process and towards materials designed for established recycling streams can be a meaningful improvement.
The problem starts when recyclable is treated as if it means recycled.
A package may be technically suitable for recycling, but that does not mean it will actually return to use as a usable material. Its end-of-life outcome depends on what happens after the consumer has finished with it: whether it is collected, whether the local sorting system can identify it, whether a recycler is able to process it and whether the recovered material has enough value to remain in circulation.
This distinction is becoming increasingly important. Under the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), recyclability is not defined by design alone. The regulation connects it first to design for material recycling and then to the package’s ability to be collected, sorted and recycled at scale.
In other words, European regulation is moving towards a more practical question. It is no longer enough to ask, “Could this theoretically be recycled?” We also need to ask, “Does a functioning system exist to recycle it?”
Consider a mono-PE coffee pouch. Compared with a conventional laminate made from several materially different layers, keeping more of the structure within the polyethylene family can make the pouch more compatible with PE recycling.
That is useful progress, but the material specification cannot determine everything that happens next.
The same pouch might be collected through a flexible-plastics recycling system in one market, accepted only at supermarket drop-off points in another and have no practical collection route at all somewhere else. The physical construction has not changed, but its realistic end-of-life outcome has.
That is why the question “Is this recyclable?” is often less useful than asking, “How is this likely to be collected and processed in the market where it will be sold?”
It also explains why the individual components of a package matter. A coffee pouch is not simply a sheet of PE. Barrier layers, inks, adhesives, zippers and degassing valves all form part of the finished pack. The PPWR’s design-for-recycling framework specifically takes established collection and sorting processes, available recycling technologies and packaging components into account. [EU PPWR]
Volcano Coffee Works, one of the brands we work with, offers a useful example of looking beyond a single material claim.
Volcano says its coffee bags are recyclable and made with 50% recycled material. But its environmental work does not stop at printing the word “recyclable” on the bag. The company also uses larger bags for wholesale customers to reduce the amount of packaging material required, operates coffee refill stations and works with the waste-management company First Mile on recycling and composting.
According to Volcano, using larger wholesale formats alone saves more than 150 kg of plastic each year.
What makes this approach interesting is not the suggestion that every choice is a perfect solution. Volcano itself describes environmental decisions as involving both a “cost and potential benefit”.
That is probably a more useful way to think about sustainable packaging. A recyclable structure is one consideration. Using less material is another. Recycled content, product protection, reuse systems and the recycling infrastructure available after use all matter as well.
Focusing on just one of these factors can make a complex packaging decision appear much simpler than it really is.
None of this makes recyclability less important. Packaging that cannot enter a recycling process in the first place is unlikely to contribute to a circular material system.
But better packaging decisions come from treating recyclability as a starting point—not as a sustainability badge.
When developing a new pack, brands should understand what has changed in the material, which recycling stream the structure is designed for, whether that stream exists in the target market and whether the new structure can still deliver the barrier and shelf-life performance the product requires.
This may make the sustainability claim slightly less dramatic, but it makes the claim considerably more meaningful.
A package can be designed to be recyclable. Whether it actually becomes recycled material depends on everything that happens afterwards.
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