WRAP Issues Guidance on Food-Grade Plastic Recycling

WRAP has published comprehensive new guidance to support the recycling of plastic packaging into food-grade plastics, particularly polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE), which together account for over half of the UK’s plastic packaging.

Contamination has been a longstanding barrier to using recycled PP and PE in food-contact applications, with a lack of standardised testing creating uncertainty for recyclers and brand owners.

The guidance follows a three-year Innovate UK-funded project led by WRAP and industry partners, resulting in the Polyolefin Challenge Test Report. This work involved a wide-ranging review of UK, EU and US regulations and a detailed study of contamination sources in post-consumer plastics. Over 400 chemical substances were identified, with around 20% classed as hazardous. Drawing on this research, WRAP has produced a robust “challenge test” protocol to demonstrate the decontamination performance of recycling processes.

The new methodology sets out practical requirements on batch preparation, surrogate selection, processing conditions and analytical techniques, giving recyclers a clear route to proving their recycled PE and PP meet food-contact safety standards.

WRAP sees this as a critical step towards achieving the UK Plastics Pact target of 30% recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030, enabling greater use of recycled polyolefins in high-value applications and giving confidence to regulators, retailers and packaging producers.

Click here for the report.