Sustainable + Circular
Mechanical Recycling of
Advanced Flexible Packaging Containing Polyamide
Advanced Packaging containing Polyamide is recyclable.
What is polyamide?
As a part of Sustainable Solutions for Extended Food Shelf Life and Packaging Efficiency
Polyamide also known as nylon or PA is an engineering plastics polymer and, a versatile material with various applications.
As one of the applications, polyamides are valued in food packaging for their barrier properties, strength, transparency, and heat resistance. These characteristics help preserve the freshness and quality of food products while providing convenience and protection to consumers.
Recyclability Certificates
Applications of Polyamide in Advanced Flexible Packaging
Which role does Polyamide play
as a part of the Circular Economy?
Less CO2 Emission
Less production cost, lower weight, less food waste going to landfills
- Advanced packaging solutions with polyamides emit significantly less CO2 than conventional packaging formats.
- Using advanced flexible packaging solutions helps to reduce overall weight and CO2 emissions during transport.
- Extending shelf life prevents and reduces the occurrence of early spoilage while reducing the greenhouse gases emitted by landfills.
Less Plastics
Less but keeping its excellent performance
Polyamides allow for thinner film structures for producing a functional packaging made with polymers compared with the existing alternatives.
In spite of the lower thickness and less use of plastics, the film containing PA will not loose its performances such as the mechanical and physical properties of the film against puncture, tear and heat, and it's recyclable♻️!
Visible & Safe
Advanced flexible packaging including polyamide helps everyone see and touch food with no risk of contamination.
Food products are normally exposed to a full process of storage, shipping, transport, and delivery network before reaching the shops. This heightens the risk of contamination of food products without packaging and of packaging ruptures. And, once in a shop, customers want to see, touch, select, and consume food items without risk of contamination.
Advanced flexible packaging containing polyamide helps to prevent contamination without losing visibility of the products, thanks to its combination of properties.
Extended shelf-life
The excellent features of advanced flexible packaging significantly increase shelf life and freshness of food by controlling the transmission rate of oxygen, carbon dioxide and moisture, ensuring food safety & hygiene, and helping food retain quality & freshness.
Helping to reduce food waste and saving resources.
Advanced Flexible Packaging is
an Essential Component of a Circular Economy
To start with: How is the nature of the standard flexible packaging?
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Most common structures are coextruded with PE where PE is the main polymer
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Between PA and PE layer there is always a Tie layer.
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Tie layer is a PE grafted with MAH which fixes the structure and compatibilizers polymers.
How are they recycled now?
Mechanical recycling process
Collection
Sorting
Recycling
Collection
Packaging containing PA is compatible with PE film recycling
In last years, numerous studies and certifications have scientifically confirmed that advanced flexible packaging containing coextruded PA with polyethylene is recyclable in the existing flexible polyethylene stream.
Examples of these certifications are from RecyClass, APR or Cyclos HTP* .
Also, thanks to those recognitions, the Central Agency Packaging Register in Germany (the Stiftung Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister) updated their “minimum standards” and certified Recycling Compatible the coextruded PE/PA6 and PE/CoPA6/66 films in the PE film stream.
* This certification of the Cyclos HTP was obtained by BASF and this covers the main European countries: Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway
Sorting
Packaging containing PA can be sorted as PE film
In the sorting process, it is critical important that packaging containing PA can be sorted correctly without affecting other waste in PE stream.
Through the trials by NTPC institute to evaluate the sorting efficiency of the packaging containing PA, both films are identified as PE-2D by the industrial optical sorter during the analyses and demonstrated to be sorted similarly to PE packaging.
Recycling Process
Recyclability studies at UBE R&D center
Proving the recyclability of PA layers in advanced flexible packaging
At UBE, we aim to prove that polyamide layers in flexible multilayer packaging can be recycled, which is why we have conducted several studies on our Performance PA SC 15, which contains 15% of UBE's Nylon 6/6.6.
Download our certificates
Download UBE's Recyclability Studies here!
"Polyamide's role in advanced packaging is crucial. What we do is revealing the fact based on the scientific data and raising awareness about advanced packaging for a truly better future."