Improving circularity of multilayer flexible plastic food contact packaging (HORIZON-CL6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-01)

Budget: 11 EUR million

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: 

• environment and society at large benefit from recyclable food packaging which can be recycled and reused back into food packaging while keeping the quality, value and extending the material lifetime; 

• industrial value chains including primary and secondary raw material producers, polymer suppliers, additives suppliers, converters, brand owners and retailers (SMEs and large companies), agri-food suppliers, waste managers and recyclers introduce sustainable food packaging on the market through enhanced design for recycling and solutions for effective sorting and recycling on an industrial scale, in line with the safeand-sustainable-by-design principles²²⁷; 

• consumers and civil society are sufficiently informed about appropriate ways of disposal of used food packaging to enable its circularity. 

Scope: Plastic food packaging represents a significant part of all plastic packaging put on the EU market. Flexible films composed of multiple layers are commonly difficult to recycle. And to date, there is no market at scale for closing the loop and establish recycling systems from food contact back to food contact application. Despite the advancement of several solutions, there is a need to improve the efficiency of recycling solutions and reach as high as possible yield of food contact compliant recycled plastic coming from post-consumer packaging films