The global pharmaceutical and healthcare packaging sector has reached a pivotal juncture. Blister packs, bottles, tubes, pouches, and other primary and secondary packaging are critical for sterility, dose precision, and patient safety, but their end-of-life profile remains largely linear: produce–use–dispose. In this article Professor Edward Kosior, Sustainability Awards winner and Founder/CEO at Nextek Ltd, plots a path forward.
For decades pharmaceutical packaging has operated under the assumption that complexity, safety and regulation place it beyond the reach of mainstream circular economy expectations. Blister packs, bottles, tubes, sachets and protective films are engineered to protect patients – and once used, are typically removed from circulation through incineration or landfill.
That assumption is now transforming into a new obligation to become more sustainable without impacting the delivery of healthcare products.
Across Europe, packaging policy, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reform and net-zero healthcare commitments are converging. Pharmaceutical packaging is no longer treated as an exceptional category. It is increasingly viewed as part of the wider packaging waste system — and expected to perform accordingly.
The result is a growing disconnect between how pharmaceutical packaging is designed and how it is regulated at end of life.
A structural circularity gap in pharmaceutical packaging
From a packaging systems perspective, pharmaceutical packaging remains one of the least circular segments of the market.
Despite years of sustainability commitments, recycling rates remain extremely low. Estimates indicate that only around 14% of pharmaceutical blister packs enter any form of dedicated recycling stream. For many other primary and secondary formats — including tubes, pouches, sachets and protective films — established recycling pathways are minimal or absent.
The default outcome for most pharmaceutical packaging in Europe is still destruction rather than recovery. This is not the result of poor intent, but of systems that were never designed to accommodate regulated, high-performance packaging.
However, under current and forthcoming EU policy, this structural gap is no longer tenable.
Why conventional recycling was never designed for pharma
Pharmaceutical packaging challenges traditional recycling models at every level, with material complexity the first barrier. Blister packs combine aluminium with multi-layer polymers. Flexible formats rely on laminated structures, adhesives and barrier layers. Bottles and closures often contain pigments, additives and functional components required for stability, dosing or child resistance.
Contamination risk comes next. Packaging that has been in contact with active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) cannot be treated in the same way as food or household packaging waste. Mechanical recycling systems are not designed to guarantee pharmaceutical-grade decontamination.
Regulatory inertia compounds the problem. Once a packaging format has been validated, any change requires extensive testing, documentation and approval — discouraging innovation to improve end of life.
Together, these factors have kept pharmaceutical packaging outside mainstream recycling systems. But they also point to a critical insight: the failure is systemic, not material.
PPWR: A turning point for regulated packaging
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) marks a decisive shift in how packaging performance is assessed across Europe.
Unlike previous directives, PPWR introduces binding, harmonised requirements focused on recyclability, recycled content, waste reduction and producer responsibility. Importantly, it signals the end of implicit exemptions based purely on complexity or perceived impracticality.
While some pharmaceutical applications will still require specific exemptions, the overall message is clear: non-recyclability now requires justification.
For packaging designers and producers, this changes the strategic question. It is no longer “Can pharmaceutical packaging be recycled?” but “What systems are required to make it recyclable in practice?”
EPR as a driver of packaging system innovation
Extended Producer Responsibility has often been treated as a compliance cost within pharmaceutical packaging. That view is rapidly becoming outdated.
Across Europe, EPR fees are increasingly eco-modulated. Packaging formats without credible recycling pathways face higher fees, greater scrutiny and escalating long-term costs. By contrast, packaging supported by proven recovery systems can benefit from reduced fees, regulatory confidence and improved material security.
For the packaging value chain, EPR has the potential to act as a design and infrastructure catalyst — boostingcollective investment in recycling systems capable of handling complexity, rather than perpetuating linear disposal.
Rethinking “impossible” packaging materials
The packaging industry has encountered similar challenges before. Flexible food packaging, cosmetic packaging and high-performance medical plastics were all once considered incompatible with circularity due to multi-material construction and contamination risks.
What experience consistently shows is that materials only become recyclable when systems are tailored forthem.
Expecting pharmaceutical packaging to conform to municipal recycling models is neither realistic nor necessary. Instead, the sector requires dedicated, controlled recycling pathways — designed to manage contamination, ensure traceability and deliver compliant outputs.
This is a systems challenge, not a materials failure.
Decontamination: The missing link in circular pharma packaging
Decontamination remains the critical barrier to closing the loop for pharmaceutical packaging.
Without the ability to remove absorbed chemicals, APIs and functional additives at a molecular level, recycled polymers cannot safely re-enter regulated or high-performance applications.
Nextek’s COtooCLEAN technology addresses this challenge using supercritical carbon dioxide. In this state, CO₂ combines gas-like penetration with liquid-like solvating power, enabling it to extract contaminants from polymers without degrading material performance.
The process leaves no residual solvents, preserves polymer properties and operates with a comparatively low carbon footprint. This creates a pathway for producing recycled materials capable of meeting pharmaceutical and healthcare standards — transforming waste streams previously deemed unrecyclable into circular resources.
Moving beyond the blister pack narrative
Blister packs often dominate discussions around pharmaceutical packaging waste — but they are only part of the picture.
The sector generates a wide range of plastic and fibre-based packaging formats, from bottles and tubes to pouches, sachets, cartons and protective films. Each presents different challenges, but together they represent a significant opportunity for circularity if addressed as a connected system.
Progress will not come from isolated material substitutions, but from integrated recovery models that manage mixed pharmaceutical packaging streams across collection, sorting, decontamination and recycling.
SusPack: Collaboration in action
This systems-led approach underpins SusPack, an Innovate UK-backed collaborative project bringing togetherNextek, University of Nottingham and University of Kent through to NPL for materials science and measurement, Sealeo Ltd for packaging solutions, CPI for pilot-scale innovation, Bridge Farm Bioscience Ltd for biotech expertise, The Naked Pharmacy Ltd for pharmaceutical packaging insight, Impact Recycling Ltd and ReVentas Ltd for recycling operations, Alga (Seaweed) Ltd for sustainable biomaterials, and Impact Solutions Ltd for consulting and systems integration.
Collectively, they are developing scalable, compliant recovery pathways for a wide range of pharmaceutical packaging formats.
Rather than focusing solely on design, SusPack addresses the entire end-of-life ecosystem, including:
- • Advanced sorting and separation of complex healthcare packaging
- • Pharmaceutical-grade decontamination and delamination processes
- • Alignment with regulatory and safety requirements
- • Scalable models that support PPWR and EPR compliance
The project demonstrates how cross-value-chain collaboration can unlock circularity where individual actors cannot.
Redefining recyclability for regulated markets
A persistent misconception in packaging sustainability is that recyclability must mean compatibility with household recycling.
For pharmaceutical packaging, this assumption is limiting and inappropriate. Regulated packaging requires controlled, auditable recovery systems, comparable with those already used in medical devices, chemicals and industrial materials.
Circularity does not require pharmaceutical packaging to enter domestic waste streams, instead it requires systems that reflect its regulatory reality — and keep valuable materials in circulation safely.
Circular packaging as a lever for net-zero healthcare
Healthcare systems account for an estimated 4–7% of national greenhouse gas emissions across developed economies. In Europe, net-zero healthcare commitments are accelerating under the Green Deal and Fit for 55.
Packaging, while only one component, is highly visible and actionable. Incineration and landfill represent both a loss of material value and avoidable carbon emissions. Circular packaging systems reduce dependence on virgin polymers and deliver measurable lifecycle carbon reductions.
For pharmaceutical and packaging companies alike, circular packaging is therefore not only an environmental obligation, but a strategic contribution to net-zero healthcare.
From incremental improvement to systems transformation
The pharmaceutical sector is rightly cautious. Patient safety must remain paramount. But safety and circularity are not opposing forces.
The technologies, policy frameworks and collaborative models required to enable circular pharmaceutical packaging now exist. What is needed is the confidence to move beyond incremental optimisation and embrace systems-level transformation.
A call to the packaging value chain
The transition to circular pharmaceutical packaging is no longer theoretical. Under PPWR, EPR reform and net-zero commitments, it is becoming unavoidable.
Packaging designers, material suppliers, recyclers and brand owners must collaborate to manufacture well designed products and build recovery and recycling systems that work in practice — not just on paper.
Materials that protect patient health should not undermine planetary health. By redesigning how pharmaceutical packaging is recovered, decontaminated and recycled, the industry can redefine what recyclability means — and turn one of packaging’s most complex challenges into a model for circular innovation.
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