PCR Packaging Guide
What has to be true for a package to be fully post-consumer, what breaks first in each process, and why food contact does not follow automatically.
"100% post-consumer recycled" is the strongest claim a package can carry, and the one that is hardest to hold while the package still has to work. This page is about what has to be true for it, across polymers, and what it costs when one of those things is missing.
What the phrase has to mean
Post-consumer means material recovered after a consumer used it, not factory offcuts. In the European recycled content minimums that distinction is load-bearing: Regulation (EU) 2025/40 counts only post-consumer material, collected in the Union or under equivalent standards and recycled in installations meeting equivalent emissions rules, and it is measured as an average per manufacturing plant and per year.
A brand claiming 100% on one product line while running nothing on another can be entirely truthful about the product and still be short of the requirement, which applies to the plant's output as a whole.
What breaks at high recycled content
The failure mode depends on the process rather than the polymer:
- Sheet and thermoforming. The melt sags, wall thickness drifts, corners stress-whiten. See rPET thermoforming.
- Blown film. The bubble becomes unstable long before mechanical properties fail, which is covered in the blown film guide.
- Bottles and containers. Top load and stress crack resistance fall, and failures appear in transport rather than on the line.
- Fiber and filament. Broken filaments, which is the least tolerant case of all. See rPET fibers.
What is common to all four is that the binding constraint is rheological, not chemical. The material is still the right polymer. It no longer behaves like it.
The three ways to get to 100%
- Start with a better stream. Closed-loop collection, deposit systems and single-polymer sorting produce material that needs least help. This is where the biggest quality gains are, and they are outside the converter's control.
- Change the design. Thicker walls, less demanding geometry, a different closure. This works and is invisible in the recycled content number, but it costs material and sometimes the customer's specification.
- Repair the polymer. A reactive additive rebuilds molecular weight so the recycled material behaves closer to virgin. This is the route the additive industry sells, and the one Nexam Chemical claims takes thermoformed PET from around 50% to 80% or 100%.
Most real programmes use all three, which is worth remembering when a single supplier's claim is presented as the reason a package reached 100%.
Food contact does not follow automatically
Recycled content and food safety are separately governed. Regulation (EU) 2022/1616 requires recycled plastic in food contact to come from a suitable technology in its Annex I or a novel technology under its Chapter IV, with the process authorised where relevant. A package can be 100% post-consumer and not lawfully usable for food, and it can be lawful and still fail on the line.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 7.
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/1616.
- Reactive Recycling applications, operated by Nexam Chemical, for the recycled content claims.
Independent research, not affiliated with Nexam Chemical and not investment advice.