> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.packagingeurope.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Inside one man’s journey to make circular food-safe polypropylene a reality - URL: https://www.packagingeurope.com/inside-one-mans-journey-to-make-circular-food-safe-polypropylene-a-reality/ - Published: 2026-11-06T13:49:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-06T14:00:03.000Z - Author: Packaging Europe staff writers - Tags: Comment, #homepage-comments, Sustainability Awards, Sustainability, Recyclability **With just a few days to go until the 2026 Sustainability Awards, we hear from a previous winner to see how their solution has progressed since they won. Professor Edward Kosior scooped the top award in 2020 for NEXTLOOPP, a project that creates food-grade packaging from recycled polypropylene.** --- Polypropylene is the most widely used food-grade polymer, yet until relatively recently post-consumer PP packaging could not be returned to food contact products. There was no automatic process to separate food from non-food packaging and there was a need to demonstrate to regulators that the sorted fraction could be turned back into circular, food-safe, material and products via a commercially proven technology. NEXTLOOPP, launched in 2020, and based on pioneering investigations by Nextek into decontamination processes for rPP, set out to solve all the above challenges by involving the whole PP supply chain, step by step, with brand owners, converters, technology providers and recyclers testing each stage. Sorting. Given the crucial role feedstock quality plays in closing the loop on food-grade rPP, sorting was one of the first challenges addressed. Identifying and separating food from non-food PP packaging required going beyond conventional near-infrared sorting. The initial approach was to use fluorescent markers on labels to create a fast and effective separation using NIR/VIS detectors. This state-of-the-art approach had three limitations; cost, potential contamination issues and the need to add labels to products that didn’t normally require labels such as many pots, tubs and trays. In 2024, following extensive research and trials with TOMRA’s AUTOSORT, NEXTLOOPP adopted their AI driven GAINnextTM deep learning technology for sorting the PP food grade fraction. TOMRA’s AUTOSORT combines near-infrared spectrometry with GAINnext, a neural network that recognises packs by shape, size, transparency, opacity, print and colour and can make a sorting decision even when a pack is crushed or torn. This involved a lot of hard work in establishing the data that enables the system to selectively separate the food grade fraction without the use of any markers and no labels. In NEXTLOOPP’s trials the system sorted 5 tons per hour of mixed PP packaging and exceeded 97% food-grade content in the output, well clear of the 95% threshold. The very latest extension of this approach has been to sort packaging based on melt index indicators generating new Melt Index grades of rPP from the post-consumer stream. **Decontamination** Sorting delivers the right feedstock, but the proof is what happens next. NEXTLOOPP started by measuring the characteristics of the post-consumer PP to identify the chemistry and prevalence of any potential contaminants in the post-consumer PP rigid packaging stream. This involved conducting 700 headspace GC-MS analyses containing more than 17,500 pieces of washed flakes from packaging, taken from a 20-tonne batch of PP bales from a UK materials recovery facility. Contamination came out around 10 times lower than the level projected for HDPE milk bottles and 100 times lower than projected for PET packaging. To prove that the NEXTLOOPP process, named PPristine, removes what remains, full-scale “challenge tests” were implemented that deliberately added surrogate molecules at levels hundreds of times higher than found in the post-consumer stream and allowed the measurement of the decontamination efficiency of the process to satisfy the requirements of EFSA and USFDA. Because “challenge tests” were initially designed for testing PET decontamination processes, they were not ideal for polyolefins in several crucial analytical and safety aspects. These were addressed by Nextek, led by Paul Marshall, in the three-year, seven-phase WRAP and Innovate UK project to develop an accurate, safer, cheaper and highly reliable polyolefin challenge test procedure that was published by WRAP in September 2025\. **Trials** NEXTLOOPP’s evidence for food-grade rPP in real packaging has been building since June 2022, when the first full-scale production trials at Mannok Pack ran 30% PPristine rPP through injection moulding and thermoforming processes, with excellent visual and processing characteristics and only minor variations from virgin PP. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/61/60/61607b5b-1c0b-4249-a886-4bc4c284c107/content/images/2026/11/PastedGraphic-2-2.png) NEXTLOOPP participant, Robinson’s, parallel injection moulding trials ran at 30%, and for some products 50% rPP, with no changes to standard temperatures and speeds. By 2024, 18 brand and converter participants had finalised 55 commercialisation trials across five PPristine resin grades, with extrusion and thermoformed trays and injection moulded products matching virgin quality without any change to processing conditions. In September 2026 trials with Brückner demonstrated that rPP can be incorporated at 20% levels into BOPP film under standard commercial production conditions, with no film breaks, no process disruption, and no significant re-optimisation of line settings. Future trials will take the levels further. From tubs and trays in 2022 to high-speed film in 2026, the data now covers the packaging formats the industry needs. **Scaling** NEXTLOOPP Americas held its inaugural launch on June 5, 2025, and has built momentum since. Alcamare became the first North American recycler to join, it was their material that was used for the Brückner PP film trials. NEXTLOOPP was named one of five winners of the WRAP-led Latin American plastics circularity programme, building on WRAP’s support for NEXTLOOPP since 2021\. In the US, NEXTLOOPP is part of the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Sustainable Packaging Innovation Lab, developing food-grade recycled PP to support American specialty crop exports to the EU. **The environmental case** An early life-cycle assessment by the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich focused on the greenhouse gas savings of the PPristine decontamination technologies. It found that mechanical recycling with NEXTLOOPP’s technologies saves up to 80% of virgin PP production emissions, with early estimates of 324kg of CO2 per tonne of food-grade recycled PP against 2,000 to 3,000kg per tonne for virgin PP. Put another way, an estimated 1.6 tonnes of CO2e is saved for every tonne of food-grade rPP used in place of virgin resin, and a single 20 ktpa plant would save about 32,000 tonnes of CO2e a year. **USFDA LNO** In September 2025 the US FDA issued a Letter of Non Objection for direct food-contact use across all food types (aqueous, alcoholic, acidic and oily foods) and application conditions - A through to H allowing use in frozen to sterilising temperatures which provides a very wide range of applications for the NEXTLOOPP resins into brand owner packaging. **Entering the EU regulatory pathway** In 2022 the EU introduced a new regulation for recycled plastics in direct food contact, EU 2022/1616, and NEXTLOOPP adapted its data and approach to meet it. In March 2026 NEXTLOOPP was listed in the European Commission’s register of novel technologies (NTN GB1-0EG-2N8). **Recognition** Since launching in 2020, NEXTLOOPP has built a strong awards record. In 2021 it was overall winner of the Packaging Europe Sustainability Awards, taking both the “Best Sustainable Packaging Innovation” and “Driving the Circular Economy” awards. In 2022 it won a WorldStar Award from the World Packaging Organisation for its food-grade rPP solution, and the Cambridge OI Forum named it an “Innovation Needs” winner for its multi-client project to close the loop on polypropylene. Our COtooCLEAN™ process, which uses supercritical CO2 to decontaminate post-consumer polyolefin films to food-grade quality, has been recognised too. It won the Alliance to End Plastic Waste’s US$3M Alliance Prize in 2022, then the Packaging Europe Sustainability Awards (Driving the Circular Economy, pre-commercialised) and the IOM3 Sustainable Future Award for Circular Economy in 2023. COtooCLEAN, part of the NEXTLOOPP pathway, is now a finalist again, with Coveris, in the Start-Up – New Systems category of the Packaging Europe Sustainability Awards 2026, one of 48 entries shortlisted from 352\. We find out the result in Utrecht next week. A win would be another independent endorsement of the whole pathway and give brand owners, converters and recyclers one more reason to get involved. Awards are welcome, but what matters most is what they confirm: that the pathway is credible and ready for the next step. **The opportunity ahead** After more than six years of detailed science, the pathway is ready to meet the market’s pressing need for food-grade rPP, today and as PPWR approaches. The technology is proven, the data is in and the approvals are advancing. We are now inviting expressions of interest from organisations that would like to invest so that food-grade rPP can be produced at commercial scale in the EU, UK, USA and beyond. From 2030, PPWR requires 10% recycled content in contact-sensitive plastic packaging other than PET, so brand owners and converters across Europe will need a reliable source of food-grade material. The first recyclers in the market will be best placed to secure long-term demand and a return on investment. **If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:** [*The ultimate guide to global packaging sustainability regulation in 2026*](https://packagingeurope.com/features/report-the-ultimate-guide-to-global-packaging-sustainability-regulation-in-2026/14625.article/) [*PPWR timeline: the key dates to know*](https://packagingeurope.com/features/ppwr-timeline-the-key-dates-to-know/14377.article) [*A closer look at the most innovative packaging solutions*](https://packagingeurope.com/features/the-ultimate-guide-to-packaging-innovation-in-2026/13821.article) [*Strategic learnings from the Sustainable Packaging Summit*](https://packagingeurope.com/features/strategic-learnings-from-the-2025-sustainable-packaging-summit/13750.article)