CEFLEX

2018-2022

The EU uses 4 million (and growing) tons of flexible food packaging. In 2018, the EU set a target of 55% recycling by 2025 - meaning a dramatically increased share of recycled content also for packaging, this would require significantly increased use of recycled content, estimated at almost 50% for PET and ~30% for PE, PP. To reach the 55% target, sorting capacity will need to increase by a factor of 2.6, recycling by almost a factor of five. The EU recycling targets are very ambitious for some member states, less so for others. Today, flexible packaging is generally less recycled than other packaging, in many countries recycling of flexibles is not yet taking place at all.

In this project, we supported the external page CEFLEX Consortium on their mission to close the loop of flexible packaging by 2025. CEFLEX is a collaborative initiative representing 160 members across the entire value chain of flexible packaging. Our aim was to design and advance better system solutions identified through the collaboration of companies representing the entire value chain. Furthermore we identified barriers for recycling to a level of detail where they can be resolved. Ultimately we created a success case for transforming an entire value chain and derived best practices as a much-needed blueprint for action. The goal is to establish a blueprint and transfer this knowledge to other value chains. Observations on the dynamics in the value chain, barriers, and contested issues are found in the project report.

In a follow-up project, we worked with the consortium to gain a deeper understanding of these contested issues and to actively forge alignment between the consortium stakeholders to advance the circularity of the value chain.
We collaboratively identified the central topics essential for the circular transformation of the flexible value chain on which the stakeholders had diverging opinions. As a central element of our project, we worked with the consortium stakeholders to jointly formulate CEFLEX position statements on selected topics in order to forge alignment and guide collaboration in the transition. The statements were taken up by the consortium as their official position on these contested issues and were shared with all stakeholders and the public. Based on our experience from these intense negotiations, we summarized the key factors for successful collaboration along a value chain to transform it from linear to circular and developed a detailed blueprint with best practices on how to facilitate such collaboration to inform not only CEFLEX’s future work but also transfer this knowledge to other value chains.