The long road to fix flexible plastics recycling in Canada

Boosting flexible plastic packaging recycling in Canada from the current 3-4 percent recycling rate to the 25 percent-plus rate that some provinces are calling for will require years of work and sizable investments, according to a new report from the Canada Plastics Pact.

That could include more than C$100 million (US$74.8 million) on new sorting facilities, as well as better curbside collection, higher environmental fees for hard-to-recycle flexible plastics and more efforts to strengthen recycling markets to counter disruption from low-cost virgin resin, the report said.

The report, "PRFlex: Perfecting the Recycling System for Flexible Plastic Packaging in Canada," doesn't mince words and says the work will take time.

"It's clear that this issue is very complex, and it is not going to be solved quickly," said Cher Mereweather, CPP managing director, during a Dec. 13 webinar to unveil its findings. "Realistically, we're looking at a five-to-10-year horizon of continuous effort and collaboration."

The report is the part of an initiative, PRFlex, launched in May by CPP, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, the Recycling Partnership and others to try to increase flexible plastics recycling.

There's a lot of government pressure in the country for better film recycling, both from the federal government and in the extended producer responsibility programs in provinces, said Charles David Mathieu-Poulin, strategic advisor for the Circular Plastics Taskforce, an industry collaborative and PRFlex member.

The provinces are pushing for more. Quebec's EPR program, for example, has a 40 percent recycling rate target for FPP in 2027, while Ontario is aiming for 25 percent by 2026, he told the webinar.

But actual Canadawide recycling rates for FPP today are only about one-tenth of that, according to information presented at the webinar.

"Three to 4 percent is actually recycled," said Mathieu-Poulin, who is also manager of public affairs and stakeholder relations for Montreal-based packaging maker TC Transcontinental. "The goals in the next 3 years are to get to 25 or 40 percent for a recycling rate. You can see that we are very far from that."

To reach those targets, he said Canada's curbside recycling systems will need to expand to include more types of flexible plastic.

Unlike in the United States, where curbside recycling of flexible plastic is rare, about 70 percent of Canadians can put at least some flexible plastic in their home curbside recycling bins, he said, although it's mostly limited to mono-material polyethylene.

"One of the main findings is that if we want to reach those targets, either voluntary or regulatory, we won't be able to do that by only accepting polyethylene films in the curbside recycling system anymore," he said. "We will have to open that to all types of FPP which includes multi-material structures for example."

One province, British Columbia, accepts many types of flexible packaging in a network of 200 drop-off depots, beginning with bags in 2014 and expanding to many other flexibles since then, said Sam Baker, Western Canada vice president of operations for Recycle BC, a non-profit that manages residential packaging and paper recycling in the province.

The depots have achieved much higher recycling rates for FPP than Canada as a whole, he said.

"The depot network that we have has been able to capture just under 25 percent of the flexible plastics placed into the marketplace in BC for residential purposes," Baker said, calling that rate "unprecedented" for North America but still below targets that have been set.

Since 2021, Recycle BC, which is part of PRFlex, has been experimenting with a much broader curbside FPP collection program and has seen the potential to capture 75 percent of residential flexible plastics, he said.

The report makes a series of recommendations to expand FPP recycling, including broadening curbside collection to dual streams of packaging and fibers and upgrading traditional materials recovery facilities to better sort flexibles in municipal recycling collection.

As well, it calls for building new, more plastics-specific FPP sorting plants that cost tens of millions of dollars each. It recommends that two such facilities, which it calls reclaimer front-end process plants, at a cost of C$50 million (US$37.4 million) each in Ontario and Quebec.

The report also calls for more coordination between consumer brand companies putting flexible plastic packaging on the market and recycling companies trying to process scrap plastic from flexibles and turn it into usable post-consumer recycled materials.

"As a priority, brand owners should be made aware of the impacts of marketing FPP that is not designed for recycling through Canada's existing recycling infrastructure and technology," it said. "It becomes impossible for reclaimers to supply PCR to companies and enable them to meet their recycled content targets if they receive materials that are difficult to process."

The report also called for more effort to boost demand for recycled resins, calling it the biggest obstacle to improving the value of waste FPP materials.

"The biggest obstacle to improving the value of FPP is the absence of a consistent market," the report said. "The fact that plastic markets can rely on the supply of low-cost virgin resin remains a major disruptor for recycled resin. Continuing to invest and engage in the use of more recycled content is the best way for producers to boost demand."

Next steps for PRFlex are to organize a steering committee to push the report's recommendations forward, continue to work on shifting the market to mono-material FPP since it's easier to recycle, and increasing FPP collection and recycling in industrial, commercial and institutional markets, said Paul Shorthouse, a senior director with CPP.

The CPP in 2021 issued a recycling road map for the country that it said was "eyes wide open" on the costs of increasing plastics recycling.

Echoing Shorthouse, Baker said Recycle BC is looking at assessing higher recycling fees on multi-material packaging to encourage a shift to mono-material FPP, as called for in the Golden Design Rules (GDRs) from the Consumer Goods Forum.

Recycle BC can apply those fees as an operator of British Columbia's extended producer responsibility, or EPR, system for packaging.

"Currently there is no differentiation between that packaging that is in alignment with the GDRs and packaging that is outside of alignment with the [golden design rules]," Baker said. "Adding a differential fee will be a financial incentive to drive producers towards the GDR-compliant work. That's a big, big tool that we have that we need to work on."

Webinar participants said the expected growth of flexible packaging in Canada, as it is around the world, puts more pressure on the project to show success.

Flexible plastic accounts for about 47 percent of the plastic packaging on the market in Canada, and it's growing 4.2 percent a year, the report said, driven by consumer popularity and performance and sustainability advantages like package light weighting.

"It's great to protect the product it contains, it's been great for climate, it's got a great carbon footprint, but it's biggest challenge has always been toward end of life," Mathieu-Poulin said.