Flexible plastics account for more than half of all plastic packaging in use today, but precious little gets recycled, and they are less amenable to circularity than plastics overall. The reasons include design complexity and a poor system fit with existing recycling infrastructure. While the problem is complex, it is solvable, say the authors of a new report, which covers actionable insights to move the dial.
Flexible packaging — including films, pouches, wraps and sachets — offers significant carbon and resource benefits during use because it is lightweight and reduces food waste. But these same characteristics make it uniquely difficult to recycle at scale. The fact that it is often used with other materials in multi-material packaging complicates its collection and recycling too. Economics don’t favour it either, with the cost of recycled flexible plastic currently high relative to virgin material.
The report,1 produced by the NGO The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, discusses these barriers. Technical solutions do exist, as the authors explain, including mechanical recycling, dissolution processes and chemical recycling. However, all rely heavily on high-quality sorted feedstock — an area where current waste management systems often fall short.
Potential tweaks
To enable mechanical recycling, the report says flexible plastics must either be collected separately or sorted to a very high degree of precision. Chemical recycling is less dependent on single-polymer purity, but still requires feedstock with minimal contamination.
Large commercial waste streams can supply relatively clean material that helps establish recycling markets. In contrast, household waste is typically first processed at municipal Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs), where flexibles are sorted into mixed bales. Outcomes improve significantly when households separate films at source — at least from paper and cardboard — before further, more detailed sorting takes place. Although recyclers can carry out this additional sorting, the report notes that dedicated large scale Plastics Recovery Facilities (PRFs) may do so more e iciently.
Such facilities also make it easier to deploy advanced identification technologies, including digital watermarks and AI-based recognition systems, which can increase feedstock consistency for mechanical recycling and purity for chemical recycling.
The report takes a whole-of-life view of how flexible plastic waste is managed, from how packaging using flexible plastic is produced, to how the collection, processing, and recycling of the resulting waste is managed, and the end markets to which the recyclate is sold. It classifies a series of end-of-life solutions for flexible plastic waste according to their environmental and economic impact. This includes open- and closed-loop recycling, refill and reuse systems, as well as materials substitution, among others.
Critical enablers
The report identifies five critical circularity enablers for flexible plastic:
• Improving collection and sorting to obtain homogenous high-quality recycling feedstock. This can be done through segregated waste collection and granular secondary sorting. The latter can be achieved with advanced detection technologies, such as digital watermarking and AIbased recognition.
• Enabling end-market demand for recycled material to drive systems viability and justify investment throughout the value chain. This can be facilitated through policy mechanisms such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, mandatory Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) content targets, and other financial interventions.
• De-risking investment to attract and sustain the capital necessary for infrastructure upgrades. Corporation tax relief, labour and energy subsidies, and concessional loans are examples of policy levers that help reduce upfront risk and improve return on investment for potential investors.
• Establishing design-for-recyclability guidelines to harmonise material choices and reduce complexity and barriers to recycling. Eco-modulated EPR fees can accelerate the adoption of simpler packaging design and ensure fair competition by rewarding packaging that is both recyclable and cost-e icient to process.
Jacob Duer, President and CEO at the Alliance said, “Delivering materials circularity for flexible plastics is complex but achievable. Solutions to improve the end-of-life management of plastic products already exist. Combined with industry action and regulatory momentum, there is a real opportunity to improve the rate and quality of flexible films recycling in an accelerated timeframe.”
He said his group “will focus on demonstrating solutions that deliver systems change.”
“Driving this will require coordinated action across the system, including identifying clear end-market opportunities for recyclates. In turn, this will make a viable business case for the investment necessary to evolve infrastructure for collection, sorting, and recycling.”
System-level thinking
The report concludes that flexible packaging circularity cannot be achieved through isolated interventions.
Instead, it calls for simultaneous action across the value chain — including packaging design changes, improved collection systems, investment in sorting infrastructure, stable policy frameworks, and long-term demand signals.
Flexible plastics represent one of the most difficult — and strategically important — frontiers in the circular economy. Without resolving the economic and systemic barriers identified in the report, policymakers risk missing major targets on plastic waste reduction, climate emissions, and resource e iciency.
Notes
[1] ‘The Challenges and Solutions for Flexible Plastic Packaging Waste’, The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, February 2026.
