Nestlé, Interzero, Total Energies and thirteen other companies have joined forces for the InFACT project, aiming to turn household plastic waste into new packaging and meet tightening European requirements for recyclability and recycled content.
InFACT consists of 16 international partners covering collection, sorting, recycling, packaging production and food companies. The project is led by the Danish Technological Institute and is expected to run from 2026 to 2028, funded by Innovation Fund Denmark through the Trace programme.
The project claims that vast quantities of flexible plastic packaging such as coffee bags, crisp packets and confectionary are incinerated or downcycled annually instead of being recycled into new packaging. InFACT cites information from the European Environment Agency which states that less than 15% of this packaging type is recycled, despite accounting for ‘nearly half’ of all plastic packaging placed on the market.
InFACT states that it combines several complimentary recycling technologies to overcome the challenges facing modern flexible food packaging such as multiple polymer layers, printing inks, adhesives and metallized surfaces, which can make the material ‘almost impossible’ to recycle through conventional mechanical re-melting. The project also seeks to address the barriers of a fragmented value chain and lack of viable business models by connecting technologies, documentation and market demand across the full packaging chain.
Per Sigaard Christensen, business manager at the Danish Technological Institute, says:
“If we can establish a commercially viable infrastructure for flexible plastic packaging, we can both support the implementation of EU requirements and strengthen the resilience of European industry. InFACT can help reduce Europe’s dependence on imported fossil oil and build a more self-sufficient circular plastics economy.”
In other news, TBM has unveiled its CirculeX material, made from post-consumer recycled plastics and believed to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 61%. CirculeX is said to achieve a 126% increase in bending strength and a 76% increase in impact strength compared with conventional post-consumer recyclate.
In March, the EU-funded BioSupPack project announced it had concluded its activities after 5 years, stating it has successfully demonstrated that brewery waste can be transformed into high-performance bioplastics for sustainable packaging. 18 consortium partners led by AIMPLAS sought to develop and validate polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA and PHB) materials and production processes that offer viable alternatives to fossil-based plastics, while supporting compliance with the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
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