Guide to Designing Packaging For Recyclability
GUIDE TO DESIGNING PACKAGING FOR RECYCLABILITY
A How-To Guide for Common Materials
Recycling has come under a lot of fire, with myths circulating like “everything you recycle gets landfilled anyway.” In reality, a well-run recycler that has taken the time to educate its community about what should and shouldn’t be recycled can sort and sell 90% or more of what they receive to be remanufactured.
Designing packaging for recyclability is one aspect of a packaging's environmental impact to keep in mind when building your sustainable packaging strategy.
Table of Contents
A Note from EcoEnclose CEO Saloni Doshi
Environmental experts and eco-minded waste management professionals all agree - after reuse, recycling is the optimal end-of-life outcome for packaging that is likely to be free of food, soil, or grease contamination at the end of its useful life.
Recycling the material means it can be quickly turned into something useful in its next life, a strategy that offsets the need for more virgin input to enter the market.
This is a big deal!
When goods are made with recycled content, they have a 30% to 90% lower carbon footprint than equivalent goods made with virgin materials. Recycling means that instead of treating our waste as something to be discarded and forgotten about in a landfill, we recognize that the material we’ve already extracted and manufactured is inherently valuable- and the optimal step is to put it to valuable use again (and again).
Currently, the majority of plastic and glass are not recycled. While paper and aluminum have higher recycling rates, an astonishing amount of these materials still get landfilled. These gaps in recycling rates are why companies like ours often have difficulty finding enough recycled input to produce our 100% recycled packaging.
It is important to note that being a proponent of recycling does not mean we (or any brands or organizations we work with) think recycling is a panacea that will solve the environmental movement and reverse climate change.
Environmentalists recognize that positive progress requires various actions that corporations, consumers, and governments must take in parallel. We need to electrify everything, increase renewable energy sources, reduce our overall consumption (especially single-use items), change how we grow and consume food sources, rethink our extractive approach to producing raw materials, and so much more.
But as long as our world creates waste that can no longer be reused or upcycled, investing our efforts into ensuring the material gets recycled back into something useful is another critical part of our environmental movement.
- Saloni Doshi, CEO at EcoEnclose
Compliance & Legislation Resources
Thin Film Recycling
Retailer Requirements
Compliance Guide
About EcoEnclose
EcoEnclose is the leading sustainable packaging company that provides eco-packaging solutions to the world’s most forward-thinking brands.
We develop diverse, sustainable packaging solutions that meet our rigorous research-based standards and customers’ goals. We drive innovative packaging materials to market and consistently improve the circularity of existing solutions.
Designing For Recyclability
As eco-conscious brands determine their packaging strategy across their entire product line, they often come to us asking:
Which materials and solutions are most recyclable?
How can I best design my packaging for recyclability?
With this resource, we hope to help you navigate these questions.
A Note On Recycled Content
End-of-life and designing for recyclability is only one aspect of packaging’s environmental impact. From the perspective of carbon emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and more - the end of life of a material is the least significant aspect.
The inputs that go into packaging have a far greater impact on its environmental impact, and utilizing recycled content is the best and most consistent way to keep your footprint as low as possible. Given this, the most critical reason to design for recyclability and maximize recycling rates is to ensure that this “waste” material can be remanufactured and used to offset the need for virgin inputs.
With that lens in mind, brands should recognize that if they prioritize designing for recyclability, they should also place just as much - if not more - emphasis on maximizing recycled content. This circular and holistic view is how brands’ choices can be a significant, positive step forward.
What Is Recycling?
It is difficult to design for recyclability without defining recycling and understanding its steps. Here’s a quick primer.
Material Collection
Consumers and businesses send their waste to be recycled
Sorting and Separating
Materials recovery facilities take in the recycled waste and sort it into bales of clean, like material
Brokering and Selling
Like materials are sold and shipped to reclaimers
Remanufacturing and Converting
The material is repelletized, remelted, or repulped and turned back into raw materials
Purchasing and Consumption
End users - brands or consumers - purchase these recycled goods for consumption
Dig Deeper: The Recycling Process
Step 1: Material Collection
Collection is where consumers and businesses send their waste to be recycled instead of having it landfilled, sent to a waste-to-energy facility, or composted. A recent study found that 91% of Americans have access to either curbside or drop-off recycling.
Mixed Recycling: This is often referred to as “blue bin” recycling, meaning that different materials are placed into a single bin to be sorted by the recycling facility.
- Curbside recycling: 60% of Americans have access to curbside recycling programs, in which a service regularly picks up their recycling bin.
- Drop-off recycling: About 31% of Americans have access to a drop-off mixed recycling program, meaning they can bring their blue bin to a centralized facility to recycle their waste. The majority of Americans with access to only drop-off services are those who live in multi-family housing. Drop-off recycling is also common in rural areas, where homes are spread further apart.
Curbside and drop-off services for blue bins generally give households and businesses a list of items they accept based on what they can sort and have end markets for. That list will differ from municipality to municipality. Obvious food or trash contamination within your blue bin can cause collectors to reject the entire bin at the time of collection and send it to the landfill.
Source-Separated: This refers to technically recyclable materials that the consumer or business must separate.
Plastic film (LDPE or HDPE) can be recycled but must be put in a special thin film bin, meaning that they are source separated. Electronics, polystyrene, glass dinnerware, and scrap metal are other recyclable materials generally not accepted by curbside programs.
The reason these materials must be source-separated varies. Sometimes, it is because the materials are difficult to sort. This is the case with plastic film, which tangles into sorting equipment causing costly shutdowns. In other situations (such as with glass dinnerware), it is because the volume of this material is low, and it would not be financially viable for a recycler to invest in collecting and sorting it.
Curbside Recycling is Preferred: In general, designing packaging to be curbside recycled is preferred if your goal is to maximize the recycling rate of your packaging. Because 60% of American households have access to a curbside recycling program, packaging readily accepted in mixed recycling and tossed into the curbside recycling bin has a higher chance of actually being recycled versus a source-separated material like LDPE thin film, based on accessibility percentages alone.
Different Recyclers Accept Different Materials: Some materials - like soda cans - are widely accepted in curbside recycling programs. Others - like yogurt containers - are more limited.
In general, recycling organizations recommend that something only be called “curbside recyclable” if the packaging is accepted by at least 60% of blue bin programs nationwide.
A Note On Take-Back Programs
There is a handful of great take-back programs for hard-to-recycle materials.
G2 Recycling and TerraCycle are examples of organizations that build recycling programs for materials like multi-layered packaging (such as potato chip bags), coffee pods, toothpaste tubes, and cigarette butts. Brands partner with these companies to execute seamless take-back programs for their products and packaging. EcoEnclose works with G2 Revolution to recycle our ReEnclose Mailers at the end of their useful life!
While these specialty recycling programs are an important addition to the recycling and circularity landscape, we are not considering them in our assessment of how much effort and resources need to be put forth on the part of brands and consumers to execute these steps.
Step 2: Sorting and Separating
Sorting and separating is only relevant for mixed recycling.
In this step, MRFs (materials recovery facilities) take in the recycled waste and sort that waste as best as possible into bales of clean, like material. Aluminum cans are sorted and baled together. The same happens for HDPE rigid containers, PET rigid containers, clear glass bottles, colored glass bottles, corrugated paper, mixed paper, etc.
Step 3: Brokerage and Selling
Like materials are sold and shipped to reclaimers.
The sale price is driven by different factors, largely: (1) the market value of the material, which is driven by supply and demand for the material and (2) the MRF’s reputation for consistently delivering clean, well-sorted products.
Step 4: Remanufacturing and Converting
The material is repelletized, remelted, or repulped and turned back into raw materials.
At this stage, the material may undergo intensive cleaning steps. Additives, colorants, or virgin puts are sometimes added during this step to achieve a final material whose functionality and aesthetics align with the end user's needs.
Once the material is produced, it is converted into a finished product or package.
Remanufacturing recycled inputs can often be more challenging and resource intensive than using clean, virgin inputs. This is because recycled waste has more inconsistencies within the material (which can lead to shutdowns of sensitive machines or a more blemished final product) and has a slightly degraded strength.
A Note On Downcycling and Advanced Recycling
Glass and aluminum are the only materials today whose material retains all their properties and strength when recycled, making them technically "infinitely recyclable." Paper and plastic materials are generally "downcycled," - meaning that because their strength degrades with each cycle, they are remanufactured into something different and can only be recycled a certain amount of times before the material reaches the end of its viable life.
Recently, there has been a lot of investment and advancement into a concept called "molecular recycling" for plastics. Often referred to as "advanced" or "chemical" recycling, this sector describes a myriad of technologies that use solvents, enzymes, and high heat to break down plastic waste into its original polymer chains (or building blocks).
This differs drastically from "mechanical recycling" - the approach most commonly used today to recycle plastic. With mechanical recycling, plastic is chipped or pelletized. Mechanical recycling is less energy and resource intensive, but it does mean that strength and quality degrade with each cycle.
Advanced recycling is still nascent, but as it improves and becomes less expensive and less energy-intensive, it will open the door to the ability to (1) recycle plastic materials that are currently extremely difficult to remanufacture - such as textiles; and (2) potentially allow for plastic to become infinitely recycle, further increasing the value and demand for recycled plastics and minimizing the need for any virgin plastics to enter the market. Because of how early we are in the world of advanced recycling for plastics, this type of recycling is not assessed in the rest of this resource. But EcoEnclose is following this technology closely and will share more information with our community as it evolves and becomes more accessible.
EcoEnclose does not consider converting materials into energy as a form of recycling. As such, it is not considered or factored into this resource.
Step 5: Purchasing and Consumption
End users - brands or consumers - purchase these recycled goods for consumption.
Recycling Common Materials
Here we share key points of common packaging materials and how the material performs at each stage of the recycling process. We note key challenges the material faces across the recycling supply chain and identify things to pay attention to when designing packaging in that material based on characteristics that can pose challenges to the sorting, selling, or remanufacturing process.
Aluminum
Material Collection
~90% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts aluminum beverage cans. Aerosol and food cans are less widely accepted.
An estimated 65% post-consumer recycling rate.
Consumers should not crush cans before recycling them.
Consumers should remove any labels and shrink wrap before recycling.
Material Sorting
Uncrushed beverage cans are easily sorted.
Crushed beverage cans can be mistaken for other materials by sorting equipment and are often landfilled.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a strong market for recycled aluminum.
This material drives a significant and critical volume of sales for recyclers.
Manufacturing & Design
Can be infinitely recycled back into itself.
Avoid adding vinyl labels and shrink-wrap sleeves to your aluminum packaging. These cause contamination and, if present in high volumes, can cause entire bales to be rejected.
Corrugated
Material Collection
~88% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts corrugated boxes.
An estimated 90% recycling rate across businesses and households.
Consumers should flatten corrugated boxes before recycling.
Tape and shipping labels do not need to be removed.
Material Sorting
Flatted corrugated boxes are easily sorted.
Grease and food contamination can cause sorting issues.
Unflattened boxes can get sorted out.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is generally a strong market for clean corrugated boxes. The material is typically converted back into corrugated or paperboard.
The material has a moderate market value but fluctuates significantly based on supply and demand, and its price dropped precipitously in late 2022.
Manufacturing & Design
Avoid adding wax coatings, using heavy printing and toner inks, bioplastic barriers, metals, plastics, laminated foils, stamped foils, wet-strength resins, and plastic windows. These interfere with repulpability, cause lower-quality outputs, and can lead to the rejection of loads.
Tape, adhesives, and shipping labels are easily sifted out during deinking and repulping process.
Mixed Paper
Material Collection
~84% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts mixed paper and paperboard packaging.
68% of paper consumed in 2021 was recycled (an all-time high).
Tape and shipping labels do not need to be removed.
Material Sorting
Moderately easy to sort.
Extremely thin paper, cushioned paper whose interior substances are unknown to the sorter (i.e., paper mailers cushioned with poly-bubble or expanded foam), and materials that can be mistaken for plastic can cause issues at the MRF and be sorted out accidentally.
Paper with dimensions under 2” on either side is sorted out and landfilled, including shredded non-continuous paper. Corporate/business paper shredding providers often sell their bales of shredded paper directly to paper mills for repulping.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a moderately strong market for mixed paper. The material is typically converted into mixed paper or lower-grade paper goods, like toilet tissue, paper towels, or tissue paper.
The material has a fair market value, which fluctuates significantly, and whose price dropped precipitously in 2022.
Manufacturing & Design
Avoid adding synthetic or wax coatings, heavy printing, toner inks, bioplastic barriers, metals, plastics, laminated foils, stamped foils, wet-strength resins, and plastic windows. These interfere with repulpability, cause lower-quality outputs, and can lead to the rejection of loads.
Tape, adhesives, and shipping labels are easily sifted out during deinking and repulping process.
Rigid PET
Material Collection
~88% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts rigid PET bottles.
An estimated 29% of PET bottles were recycled in 2018.
Consumers should remove wraparound shrink-wrapped labels and replace PET caps before recycling.
Material Sorting
Black rigid PET containers are sorted out of the recycling stream to the landfill because the optical scanners (robots that determine the material makeup of items sorted in the MRF) cannot “see” carbon black and determine the makeup of this packaging.
Caps not screwed onto the bottle are sorted out because of their small size.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a strong market for clear rigid PET, typically turned back into PET bottles, fabric, and apparel.
The price of recycled PET is up significantly (in general, though down from its peak in 2021). Brands struggle to find enough recycled PET to meet their skyrocketing needs due to corporate commitments to recycled content.
Manufacturing & Design
Use clear or white PET plastics when manufacturing, as these can be recycled into various goods.
Avoid black plastic; see sorting.
Avoid tinted or colored plastics, which have a lower-end value (selling 30-50% below the price of clear plastic) because they are limited in what they can be remanufactured into.
Avoid wraparound labels and shrink wrapping.
Rigid HDPE
Material Collection
~87% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts rigid HDPE bottles.
An estimated 29% of HDPE bottles were recycled in 2018.
Consumers should remove wraparound shrink-wrapped labels and replace HDPE caps before recycling.
Consumers should remove and landfill non-HDPE caps before recycling.
Material Sorting
Black rigid HDPE containers are sorted out of the recycling stream to the landfill because the optical scanners (robots that determine the material makeup of items sorted in the MRF) cannot “see” carbon black and determine the makeup of this packaging.
Caps not screwed onto the bottle are sorted out because of their small size.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a strong market for clear, rigid HDPE, typically turned back into HDPE bottles or downgraded into plastic film.
HDPE sells for a higher price per pound than any other rigid plastic. In 2021, recycled HDPE was on par with aluminum (and that price was over 20x what it was the year prior). It is now down from its peak but still up by historical standards. Brands are struggling to find enough recycled HDPE to meet their skyrocketing needs due to their corporate commitments to recycled content.
Manufacturing & Design
Use clear or white HDPE plastics when manufacturing, as these can be recycled into various goods.
Avoid black plastic; see sorting.
Avoid tinted or colored plastics, which have a lower-end value (selling 30-50% below the price of clear plastic) because they are limited in what they can be remanufactured into.
Avoid wraparound labels and shrink wrapping.
Rigid PP
Material Collection
~59 to 72% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts rigid PP containers. Access varies depending on the form - PP bottle acceptance rates are higher, PP tubs are lower.
PP recycling rate has historically been less than 3% in the US. The technology for PP recycling is relatively new, and US recycling rates are expected to rise quickly.
Consumers should remove wraparound shrink-wrapped labels and replace caps before recycling.
Material Sorting
Black rigid PP containers are sorted out of the recycling stream to the landfill because the optical scanners (robots that determine the material makeup of items sorted in the MRF) cannot “see” carbon black and determine the makeup of this packaging.
Caps not screwed onto the bottle are sorted out because of their small size.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a strong market for recycled PP, largely because supply remains relatively tight. The material is typically turned into clothing, dishware, and food containers.
However, the price of rigid PP is lower than PET and HDPE.
Manufacturing & Design
Use clear or white PP plastics when manufacturing, as these can be recycled into various goods.
Avoid black plastic; see sorting.
Avoid wraparound labels and shrink wrapping.
*Note that P&G’s novel PureCycle technology launched in 2020 and is committed to recycling PP of all colors into virgin-like quality recycled materials. This technology could become a game changer for PP recycling in the US.
Thin Film PE (LDPE)
Material Collection
~90% of US residents have ready access to source-separated thin film dropoff in grocery stores and big box retail stores.
A small but growing number of cities offer curbside recycling for this material. Anyone with access to this through curbside recycling is generally asked to tie their bags into a knot first to avoid flyaways during collection and transport.
How do I know if it’s PE? Consumers are asked to tear bags. If it stretches, then it should be recycled. It should be landfilled if it tears like paper or makes a crinkly/crunchy sound.
Consumers should remove metallic and plastic labels before recycling. Paper labels can remain on the packaging.
Consumers should ensure the packaging is clean and completely dry before recycling. Thin film that packages powders, liquids, and other hard-to-clean items are difficult to recycle.
Material Sorting
Though thin film is source-separated, workers at reclaimers also double-check and sort the material to remove contamination before it is repelletized.
During this sorting process, workers often rely on the “feel” of the film material to determine whether its makeup is truly LDPE or not - for example, PP or cellulose, which often look similar to LDPE but have a crinkly/crunchy rigidity and feel.
If your aesthetic or design requirements include a more rigid (very high gauge), cornered, clear bag, it’s important to note that sorters may discard it from being recycled, even if it is LDPE.
Brokering & Market Strength
There is a strong market for clean LDPE and HDPE film.
Currently, most of it is turned into composite lumber (TREX) and other durable rigid plastics.
Recently, technology has advanced to allow for bag-to-bag recycling, which is gaining traction worldwide.
The price of films is currently up compared to historical trends, though down from their peak in 2021.
This market fluctuates slightly with the economy and home construction trends.
Manufacturing & Design
Avoid metallic or non-PE components outside of paper-based shipping or product labels.
The entire structure must be made with polyethylene. This is especially important when constructing multi-layer pouch packaging.
*The only exception is EVOH, which can be included in an all-PE film structure in small amounts (<5% by weight) to provide barrier properties and still be thin-film recyclable.
Multi-layer flexible film
Material Collection
Not recyclable, except for all-PE films that contain <5% EVOH.
Material Sorting
Not applicable
Brokering & Market Strength
Not applicable
Manufacturing & Design
Not applicable
Flexible PP
Material Collection
Not recyclable
Material Sorting
Not applicable
Brokering & Market Strength
Not applicable
Manufacturing & Design
Not applicable
Rigid PS (Styrofoam)
Material Collection
~45% of US residents have ready access to recycling programs that accept rigid polystyrene containers (PS clamshell containers, PS egg cartons, etc.).
Colored foam, packing peanuts, foam boards with flame retardants, and polyurethane are rarely or never accepted.
Consumers should remove tape, labels, food and beverage residue, and other contaminants before recycling.
Material Sorting
Polystyrene is a voluminous yet lightweight material. Because of how costly it is to fill a truck to transport large volumes of polystyrene, the material can only be accepted by recycling facilities that have invested in the onsite equipment required to sort and compress polystyrene into dense blocks.
Brokering & Market Strength
The polystyrene market is modest, but demand currently outstrips supply because of how little polystyrene is currently recycled.
Currently, it is turned into rigid PS products, such as disposable cutlery and lids for hot beverage cups.
Manufacturing & Design
Avoid colored foam and packing peanuts that can easily be confused with other materials, such as corn starch.
If using polyurethane, make it very clear that this material cannot be recycled.
Glass
Material Collection
~75% of US residents have ready access to a recycling program that accepts glass packaging.
More municipalities are removing glass from their mixed recycling stream and moving the material to a source-separated program.
An estimated 33% of glass bottles are currently recycled in the US. This rate is 90% in some European countries.
Consumers should rinse jars, but they do not need to be spotless. Lids should be removed and recycled loose or landfilled. Labels do not need to be removed.
Consumers should not recycle durable glass (not packaging) because it is not readily recyclable - windows, lightbulbs, drinking glasses, etc.
Material Sorting
The US’s mixed recycling approach (versus the source-separated approach used by many other countries) makes sorting and separating glass challenging.
Broken glass contaminates other material streams. When glass is broken down too much, it is sorted out and landfilled.
The sorting process often leads to lower quality, contaminated cullet (recycled glass pellets), which threatens extremely expensive furnaces used for remanufacturing.
Brokering & Market Strength
Glass is technically infinitely recyclable and does not lose quality with each cycle. Cullet is desired by glass manufacturers - as it saves costs and improves output quality.
Unfortunately, only 40% of glass that gets recycled in mixed bins is sold successfully. 90% of glass in source-separated streams gets recycled. This is due to the sorting and quality issues described earlier and the high cost of transporting heavy and dense material.
Manufacturing & Design
Use amber, clear and green glass as these can all be recycled.
Avoid mixing different glass colors in the same package because glass must be separated by color before recycling.
Avoid mixing any non-glass inputs outside of labels.
PLA and Other Bioplastic
Material Collection
Not recyclable. Intended to be composted.
~27% of US residents have access to an industrial composting service, and ~3% have curbside access.
The majority of industrial composting programs do not accept bioplastic packaging.
Material Sorting
Not applicable
Brokering & Market Strength
Not applicable
Manufacturing & Design
Not applicable
Trends and Tips
Think “Monomaterials”
MRFs sort and sell bales of like materials - mixed paper, corrugate, glass, aluminum, PET, HDPE, etc. - which are then broken down into their core components to be remanufactured. When multiple materials are combined, separating them is extremely difficult and costly, and must be done at the manufacturer rather than at the MRF.
Given this, design your packaging with only a single material as much as possible. Don’t combine paper and plastic, aluminum and plastic, or add coatings.
An all-poly bubble mailer can be recycled; a poly bubble interior/paper exterior cushioned mailer cannot.
An all-PE pouch is recycle-ready; a pouch made with PE and PET with a foil lining is not. There are instances where this is absolutely necessary, but we often see multi-material packaging in situations where it isn’t functionally essential but serves an aesthetic purpose.
Avoid Coatings
Coatings often make paper packaging unrecyclable. Sometimes, their presence can cause entire bales of material to be rejected.
In the best case scenario, coatings pass the “pulpability” test but create output that is poorer quality. We often see coatings used when it is not functionally necessary but simply serve an aesthetic purpose.
Given this, we strongly recommend doing away with coatings altogether in service to the quality and viability of what your packaging gets recycled into.
When coatings are necessary, keep them to a minimum, ideally making up no more than 5% of the packaging by weight. In some cases, this is not possible. For example, frozen food cartons often need quite a bit of coating to provide wet strength properties. In these cases, be clear to customers that their packaging is likely unrecyclable.
Avoid Colorants and Heavy Ink Coverage
In general, uncolored packaging can easily be remanufactured into something high quality in its next life.
At best, colored plastic and glass packaging can get recycled but is sold at a lower cost and has more limited next-life options. At worst, in the case of plastic tinted with carbon black ink, the packaging will get sorted out of any MRF and be landfilled.
Given this, avoid unnecessarily tinting your packaging.
Additionally, paper packaging that is flood-coated, printed with a full coverage design, or printed with toner inks causes lower-quality next-life products.
Product and Shipping Labels
Relatively small product labels on plastic, glass, and paper packaging generally cause minimal issues. The one important major concern is thin film polyethylene, which ideally only has paper labels (like shipping labels) adhered to and should have no metal components to its labels.
Aluminum is the one exception, where even small labels cause recycling issues. Because aluminum cans have always been directly printed historically, the aluminum remanufacturing supply chain isn’t equipped to handle large quantities of product labels.
Given this, wraparound/shrink wrap and any other full-coverage labels should be avoided across all packaging types.
To Clean or Not To Clean
In general, glass, aluminum, and rigid plastic packaging should be given a quick rinse but do not need to be spotless.
The most common question MRFs get is related to peanut butter jars, and their most frequent answer (though this varies, as does all guidance, MRF by MRF) is to soak the jar to loosen the product, quickly scrub residue out, and then recycle the container even with the butter that still gets left behind.
Remanufacturers are well-equipped to clean residue from these packaging items.
Polyethylene bags are the main exception - these must be clean and completely dry before recycling.
When it comes to paper, most MRFs still ask that the material not be soiled with grease or food residue, though this guidance is changing slowly as more repulping data comes out.
A Final Word
This guide is intended for brands developing their packaging strategy and assumes that these brands cater to a nationwide or worldwide customer base.
It should not be read as specific guidance for individuals looking to recycle their packaging!
Recycling in the United States is localized. What can and can’t be recycled, where materials get sold, and what they get remanufactured into it depends on a person’s local recycler - their equipment, goals, and buyers. Everyone should review the list posted by their local recycler of acceptable and unacceptable materials, and the instructions they provide around recycling. If a recycler has a material on their list of accepted items, RECYCLE IT! This guidance means they have a buyer for the material, and these sales help fund the recycler’s operation and their ability to stay in business.
Connect With Us
EcoEnclose is here to help brands navigate the complicated world of sustainable packaging, helping match your company with circular shipping supplies that will live up to your eco values.
We’d love to become your eco-friendly packaging partner so you can be proud of how you ship.