Multilayer Packaging in a Circular Economy

Jannick Schmidt; Laura Grau; Maximilian Auer; Roman Maletz; Jörg Woidasky

doi:10.3390/polym14091825

Multilayer Packaging in a Circular Economy

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Apr 29;14(9):1825. doi: 10.3390/polym14091825.

Authors

Jannick Schmidt¹, Laura Grau¹, Maximilian Auer¹, Roman Maletz², Jörg Woidasky¹

Affiliations

¹ Institut für Industrial Ecology, Hochschule Pforzheim, Tiefenbronner Straße 65, 75175 Pforzheim, Germany.
² Institute of Waste Management and Circular Economy, Technische Universität Dresden, Pratzschwitzer Straße 15, 01796 Pirna, Germany.

Abstract

Sorting multilayer packaging is still a major challenge in the recycling of post-consumer plastic waste. In a 2019 Germany-wide field study with 248 participants, lightweight packaging (LWP) was randomly selected and analyzed by infrared spectrometry to identify multilayer packaging in the LWP stream. Further investigations of the multilayer packaging using infrared spectrometry and microscopy were able to determine specific multilayer characteristics such as typical layer numbers, average layer thicknesses, the polymers of the outer and inner layers, and typical multilayer structures for specific packaged goods. This dataset shows that multilayer packaging is mainly selected according to the task to be fulfilled, with practically no concern for its end-of-life recycling properties. The speed of innovation in recycling processes does not keep up with packaging material innovations.

Keywords: circular economy; lightweight packaging; multilayer; plastic; recycling.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as a part of the framework program ‘‘Research for Sustainable Development’’ (FONA3) on the topic ‘‘Plastics in the environment’’ with grants no. 033R195A-E under supervision of the project executing organization Jülich (PTJ).