In its latest paper, The Consumer Goods Forum has set out packaging design guidelines to avoid pollution, increase recycling rates, and help informal waste sectors profit in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Reportedly, approximately 60% of the plastic collected for recycling around the world is handled by 40 million waste pickers; yet waste pickers in LMICs have lost over $150 million in potential earnings due to poorly designed PET bottles.
Waste pickers are more likely to collect valuable packaging materials; the papercites a statistic that 75% of the total plastic that leaks into the environment in Indonesia is low-value packaging. Designs that raise the value of a pack are expected to reduce the likelihood of waste leaking into the river, ocean, or terrestrial ecosystems.
Based on its own Golden Design Rules, the Consumer Goods Forum believes that manufacturers should increase the recycling value of PET packaging by using transparent and uncoloured PET, and by ensuring that adhesives and the size of a sleeve or label do not create complications.
These steps might include removing PVC from labels and closures to facilitate the production of food-grade rPET, or considering manual sorting when determining label size or adhesive choices in the design phase.
To increase the recycling value of rigid HDPE and PP, manufacturers are urged to use minimal direct printing, avoid fillers that increase packaging density by >1g/cm3, and ensure that their material choices, liners and seals of closures are compatible with recycling processes.
Non-recyclable lids, caps and labels have led workers at Brazil’s ACLAMA waste picker association to manually reject around 11% of rigid HDPE packaging, while contamination from PP labels and closures in the HDPE stream can apparently reach up to 10% by weight. Blended resin components are hard to sell and rarely recycled, meaning they are often dumped, incinerated or landfilled.
Additionally, recycling instructions should be provided on-pack to ensure that consumer plastic packaging ends up in the relevant waste stream. Manufacturers should consider lower literacy rates or the number of dialects spoken in any given end market, since unclear labelling may prevent waste pickers from capturing the full value of a recyclable material.
The Consumer Goods Forum urges policymakers and industry to agree on a labelling approach that can be understood, regardless of literacy or language, in markets with large informal workforces. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has already identified South Africa’s On-Pack Recycling Labelling (OPRL) as good practice for developing countries.
Applying these principles in LMICs is set to unlock personal and economic benefits without introducing unnecessary complexity or cost for consumers or industry. Better design could make materials cheaper and easier to process while providing recyclers with higher-quality feedstock.
If a pack can be sorted by polymer type, colour, and format, it is expected to reduce the time aggregators and material recovery facilities (MRFs) spend baling and selling materials – as well as avoiding extra sorting, handling and disposal costs.
Lower contamination and consistent material streams could also help recyclers meet buyers’ quality requirements, unlock higher market value for recyclable materials, and create an ongoing supply of high-quality recycled feedstock for end markets.
However, the Consumer Goods Forum emphasizes that businesses should consult local organizations, from waste picker associations to regulators, to design their packaging in line with individual market realities and infrastructure.
Generally speaking, rigid plastic packaging is considered the ‘highest-impact starting point’ to improve packaging designs in LMICs. These formats are more likely to be recycled and carry a higher market value, the Consumer Goods Forum explains; in West Java, Indonesia, the price of rigid HDPE and PP is thought to average around 3.5 times higher than multilayer plastics.
LMICs are increasingly developing mandatory design-for-recycling standards and extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems such as eco-modulated fees. Throughout this process, the Consumer Goods Forum hopes that industry associations and other stakeholders will encourage the adoption of its ‘globally applicable’ design guidelines, while manufacturers adopting design-for-recycling principles are set to get ahead of incoming regulation and benefit from fee eco-modulation.
Earlier this year, the Consumer Goods Forum’s Plastic Waste Coalition of Action published a report that identified setbacks and recommended guiding principles to help LMICs apply extended producer responsibility to liquid packaging cartons. Solutions included a dedicated category for liquid packaging cartons, preferably within paper; ensuring national collecting and recycling systems accept liquid packaging cartons; and setting realistic collection and recycling targets in line with existing infrastructure.
Another report commissioned by WWF previously warned that low-income countries could face up to ten times higher costs than their high-income peers when it comes to the environmental, health, and economic impacts of plastic waste – despite consuming nearly three times less plastic per capita.
