Recycling
The second life of packaging waste from separate urban waste collection in Italy.
COREPLA ensures that packaging waste from separate urban waste collection is properly recycled, by recovering the waste and transporting it to recycling facilities, in compliance with market rules and equal access for all operators.
As many as 30 distinct waste streams from separate collection are selected for the production of new raw materials – End of Waste or Secondary Raw Materials (SRM) – in accordance with current legislation. The materials obtained in the sorting phase are sold on the market by COREPLA, with special terms depending on:
- the type of polymer;
- the capacity and maturity of the recycling markets.
Plastic packaging can have different degrees of recyclability, depending on either the technical feasibility of recycling or the polymer composition of the packaging, which varies according to required performance. For example, high-performance packaging, which extends the useful life of an otherwise quickly perishable product, is often composed of different polymers and is therefore more complex to recycle.
The future of packaging faces two main challenges. The first involves investing in research and development projects to give new life even to the most complex and high-performance packaging, and second, changing design to combine high performance and recyclability.
