L’Oréal has become the first major brand owner to join the NEXTLOOPP Americas consortium, which pursues a closed loop for food-grade recycled polypropylene throughout the region.
Launched in 2024, NEXTLOOPP Americas – an extension of the original NEXTLOOP project in Europe – aims to unlock circularity for post-consumer recycled polypropylene, using the recyclate in food-contact materials across the Americas.
It seeks to mobilize recyclers, converters, brand owners, and other stakeholders across the value chain to introduce infrastructure, technologies, and regulatory pathways for safe and scalable recycling processes. These include technologies like AI-driven sorting, high-performance cleaning and decontamination systems, and NEXTLOOPP’s own proprietary PPristine resin process.
NEXTLOOPP’s food-grade recycled polypropylene recently received a Letter of No Objection from the FDA, which validates its use for direct food-contact applications across all food types.
“We are delighted to welcome L’Oreal as the first brand owner to join NEXTLOOPP Americas,” said Edward Kosior, founder and president of NEXTLOOPP. “Having worked closely together in Europe since 2022, extending this collaboration to the Americas is a natural next step as we scale our proven model globally.”
“L’Oréal’s participation provides a bridge between the European and American programmes,” added Marcio Amazonas, vice president of NEXTLOOPP Americas. “It strengthens cross-market collaboration, accelerates knowledge transfer, and shows how circular packaging can work at scale across continents.”
The news comes after a previous collaboration between L’Oréal and NEXTLOOPP. Back in 2022, the companies worked together to turn post-consumer packaging waste into food-grade recycled polypropylene. Using a combination of Nextek technologies, the companies sought to separate and decontaminate food-grade polypropylene in line with UK, EU, and USA standards.
It also follows the announcement that Alcamare International Group has joined the NEXTLOOPP Americas initiative.
In other news, TOMRA recently invited NEXTLOOPP participants to watch live demonstrations of its latest sorting systems for polypropylene, including the deep learning solution GAINnext. It reportedly uses neural networks and object recognition to distinguish food-grade and non-food-grade polypropylene – and, when combined with traditional sorting sytems, it is thought to achieve ‘the highest sorting granularity currently available’.
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