Beginning of March, two major Sustainability events took place in the United States, that brought together representatives from the plastics and packaging and recycling industries. The first one was the Plastics Recycling Conference that took place in National Harbour, just outside of Washington. The second event was „Sustainability in Packaging“ that too place in Chicago from March 8-10, where CCL had been invited to present and share the sustainability perspective of a label manufacturer. A great opportunity to present our sustainable label portfolio and discuss possible solutions with the brand customers that were present.

Please find below some insights and bullet points, that sum up the main messages of the two events in the United States:

• In the last year, more bills regarding recycling have been proposed than in the last 20 years combined
• In the USA the discussion is focused on EPR (extended Producer Responsibility Schemes) and so-called bottle bills (deposity system)
• „Design for Recycling“, so the redesign of packages so that they can be recycled is seen as key to drive recyclability. Also legislation needs to acompany these developments
• Virgin material still too inexpensive – no incentive to make any changes and to include PCR. Policy can create the environmant to meet recycling and PCR targets.
• Consumer education is key: there is a lot of mixed messaging out there and greenwashing. Consumers have to be empowered to put the waste into the right bin. Household decison makers decide about success or failure of the system and need to be brought on bord
• Investments are underway: Rebublic Recycling is investing in a big bottle-to-bottle food grade PET recycling unit outside Las Vegas. They prefer polyolefin floating sleeves to PET-C with washable inks.
• PET clamshells are increasingly being tried to recycle
• SORTING: Big developments on image recognition, sorting AI. Several companies are working on optimizing photo recognition of waste that then is sorted by robots. Will watermark technology (Digimarc) and AI exist next to each other or will one „win“? Image recognition also set to work on film, already does. (AMP Robotics)
• APR (Association of Plastic Recyclers) just intruduced their „meets preferred guidance“ program which s less costly that the old recognition programs
• Monica Medina, US Department of State: „Not plastic but plastic pollution needs to be adressed“
• APR is launching a national campaign on NPR in the US. Main messages:
• „Plastic Recycling is working now, APR is the solutions provider, Plastic is the best fit for many applications in modern life.“