The future of flexible packaging? Sustainable

On March 21 and 22 the third Print4All Conference was held in Fiera Milano: dedicated to the printing community, it offered a valuable opportunity to compare cultural trends and technological issues that are driving the industry and brand owners.

The contribution of Giflex, the association that brings together producers of flexible packaging for the packaging of food, pharmaceutical, chemical and other industrial applications, was invaluable (92 member companies representing 85% of Italian production, with a turnover of over € 2 billion, 55% for export, and over 7,000 employees).
The President Michele Guala analysed the evolution of flexible packaging, in consideration of the indications reported in the European “Plastic Strategy”, and the characteristics of the possible solutions from the point of view of sustainability, from the use of recyclable mono-material (polyolefinic) packaging to the use of biodegradable and compostable materials, up to mechanical and chemical recycling.
«Many flexible packaging items will have to be modified or adapted, with the aim of making them more recyclable. In fact today, despite the gap between technical solutions and the effective start-up of flexible packaging recycling, this solution is in most cases the “lightest” and therefore most sustainable, alternative for preserving food products ».
Guala also pointed out that «Making flexible packaging sustainable can, for example, be implemented through the use of mono-materials or biodegradable or compostable material. On the recycling front, we are in a moment of transformation: we look with great interest at chemical recycling, which however needs more time to become an industrial reality. As regards mechanical recycling, a still unsurpassed limit is the inability to obtain resins suitable for the production of food contact packaging, which in fact reduces the outlet market».