Did you know that the greatest environmental gains can be made during the product design process? Design for Recycling helps producers to design in such a way that materials can be easily, safely and high-quality reused at the end of their useful life. The new European PPWR regulations fit in seamlessly with this, as they encourage and require producers to make packaging more recyclable from the design phase onwards. In this way, packaging becomes smarter, more material is preserved and together we reduce waste.
What is Design for Recycling?
Design for Recycling, or DfR for short, are guidelines that help designers make products so that they can be easily, safely and high-quality recycled at the end of their useful life. Because 70-80% of a product's environmental impact is determined at the design stage, these guidelines are especially important on the road to a waste-free world. DfR is not a law, but a concept that supports designers in sustainable choices. When something is poorly designed, no waste processor can make something high quality out of it.
What is the added value of the Design for Recycling criteria?
Once you understand what Design for Recycling means, you immediately see where things go wrong in practice. Some products are so clumsily designed that waste processors can't handle them. Some examples are;
- Multilayer packaging, such as chip bags, composed of plastic, aluminum and glue permanently fused together. It seems smart for shelf life, but for waste processors it is a nightmare. Currently, there is no recycling method for these bags.
- Black plastic packaging, black plastic seems ordinary to the eye, but to sorting scanners it is invisible. This is because they scan with infrared and black (plastic) absorbs this light and therefore it automatically ends up in the residual waste and does not allow for higher quality recycling. In fact, in some countries the use of black plastic is already banned!
- Sportswear with mixed fibers, such as polyester elastane blends. Fantastic to play sports in, but impossible to separate and thus process, these fibers are literally intertwined.
Fortunately, there are also designs that show exactly how powerful DfR can work when wisely designed:
- Mono-material PET bottles with PE caps and removable label, where all components are easily identifiable by the sorting line and can be used and reused in high-value bottle recycling without any problems. The same applies to the labels on the bottles, easily removable and therefore no contamination in the waste stream.
- PP yogurt cups, where cup, lid and sometimes also the label remain within the same material family. No surprises, no contamination in the waste stream. In the process, you yourself as a consumer also have the opportunity to dispose of it separately.
- Modular laptops, where parts such as the battery, screen and keyboard can be replaced or recycled separately. The parts are not glued but screws and click systems make assembly and disassembly easier. In addition, these laptops include clear marking of metals, plastics and circuit boards, this ensures that when disassembled, the materials easily end up in the proper waste stream for high-quality recycling.
These examples show that Design for Recycling is mostly about logical thinking: designing products so that they can be effortlessly taken apart and reused after use, giving used materials the highest quality second life possible.
Read also
Why recycling is not truly circular
Why is Design for Recycling important for the circular economy?
The aforementioned examples show that products designed according to DfR guidelines can be easily, safely and highly reused!
The preservation of raw materials and the high degree of recyclability of individual components in products makes a nice contribution to the circular economy. Resource consumption is reduced, think of no new glass, new plastic or new steel to be mined. At the same time, the DfR criteria reduce waste, because the materials stay in the cycle. A logical consequence of this is that the environmental impact is also reduced.
Design for Recycling and the PPWR, do they go hand in hand?
DfR is important for the circular economy and just a guideline for designers, but it is now also the subject of European regulations. The European Union is introducing new regulations, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). The PPWR increasingly obliges manufacturers to design packaging to be recyclable and reusable. This fits perfectly with the principles of DfR: products (and in this case packaging) are designed in such a way that they can later be reused easily, safely and to a high quality.
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