Newsroom archive

A wish for mono-material packaging

Multi-material packaging is recycling's oldest headache. In early 2021, the industry's wish list started with design that fits the streams we already have.

Assorted plastic bottles and flexible multi-material pouches on a table

Pouches, multilayer films and mixed-resin formats do jobs a single material struggles to do, and then defeat the sorting and reclaiming systems built to recover them. That tension is why design for recycling kept rising up the industry agenda.

The wish GHD shared at the start of 2021 was simple: more packaging conceived as mono-material from the drawing board, so that what leaves the shelf can actually come back as feedstock.

The same design question decides what happens to trays and clamshells today. Read our analysis of PET thermoform recycling.

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From the GHD Americas newsroom archive. Originally shared on January 11, 2021.