The European consortium Ceflex (Brussels, Belgium; www.ceflex.eu), which represents more than 160 organisations across Europe working in flexible packaging, has called for the use of such packaging made from recyclable mono-materials to accelerate the drive towards a circular economy.

A new white paper, "Designing for a Circular Economy", written by Ceflex with input from Swiss university ETH (Zurich; www.etchz.ch) highlights the importance of evaluating the functional requirements of packaging “and, when possible, to redesign existing flexible packaging to a recyclable mono-material”.

Arne Jost from German plastics recycler mtm plastics, a unit of Ceflex member Borealis, said implementing the Ceflex guidelines and this position paper are working to increase the mono-material content in a bale of post-consumer film. “This will be a welcome improvement for all recyclers and help accelerate end markets.”

Other Ceflex stakeholders include BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany; www.basf.com), Solvay (Brussels / Belgium; www.solvay.com) and Ineos (London / UK; www.ineos.com).