Mondi, in cooperation with chemical producer BASF and COROOS, have cooperated on a state-of-the-art pilot project which sources feedstock from post-consumer plastic waste to produce virgin grade material for food contact approved quality.
Together they produced a stand-up pouch that is safe for food contact partly made with raw material which was derived from chemically recycled plastic.
Mondi partnered with BASF to produce this virgin grade material into a multi-layer laminate for food packaging for COROOS private label products and their own A-brand Servero.
In the manufacturing, 100 per cent of the fossil feedstock was replaced by pyrolysis oil derived from mixed recycled material for one of the inner layers (oriented polyamide, OPA-12 mm).
In total 12 per cent of the packaging weight is made of ChemCycled material. The recycled material was allocated via a certified mass balance approach.
Mondi believes that packaging should be sustainable by design, using paper where possible, and plastic when useful.
Christoph Gahn, who is responsible for the polyamide business at BASF, said: “BASF is working on advancing the chemical recycling of plastic waste, because this will make it possible to process and reuse plastics that are currently difficult to recycle such as mixed plastics. This prototype packaging which is based on pyrolysis oil derived from waste plastic shows that the life cycle of consumer plastics, including multilayer packaging, could become a closed loop.”