Used across a wide range of everyday life applications, Styrenic polymers are one of the world’s most easily sortable and recyclable materials. They can be recycled over and over again – including for food contact uses – while retaining their high-quality value. This means they have an excellent closed-loop recycling potential, allowing them to be recycled back into high-value applications.

A socio-economic analysis of Styrenics carried out by (former) Wood1 found that their circular potential is based on several factors. Firstly, Styrenic polymers’ existing technology and properties make them easily sortable from mixed plastic waste. They can also be precisely sorted into different Styrenic polymer types and forms. This allows for tight control of the properties of the recycled material for its next intended use. Finally, Styrenic polymers can be efficiently recycled via a wide range of at-scale technologies, with their material quality and properties remaining stable and not degrading over multiple recycling processes.

Meeting the European Union’s ambitions on circularity

The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD) lays down measures to prevent the production of packaging waste and promotes the reuse and recycling of packaging waste.

As part of the European Green Deal and the New Circular Economy Action Plan, the European Commission put forward a revision of the PPWD in November 2022, shifting to a Regulation aiming to harmonise packaging rules at EU level. The initiative’s aim is to ensure that all packaging is reusable or recyclable in an economically feasible way by 2030.

The legislation should serve as a catalyst to transform the plastics packaging industry by ensuring recyclability and increasing the uptake of circular plastics in many packaging applications.

For contact-sensitive applications, such as food packaging, the Commission’s proposal includes minimum recycled content targets for plastic packaging for 2030 and 2040.

Plastic producers support these revisions to the PPWD as it will contribute to the secondary raw materials market and reduces the need for fossil feedstock, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving plastic circularity. It also gives the industry confidence to continue to invest in recycling technologies, suitable for all applications including contact-sensitive.

However, industry alone cannot achieve these targets. It requires an EU-harmonised framework to improve waste collection and sorting, and investment in robust recycling infrastructure across all member states.

Recycling food packaging

Polystyrene is one of the best-suited polymers for closed-loop recycling for food applications, maintaining high quality and safety standards over multiple recycling processes. Read more about Styrenics and food safety here.

Food containers such as yoghurt pots, butter tubs and meat packaging can easily be recycled because their polymer matrix is closed. This prevents any waste impurities from entering into the polymer and causing contamination.

In cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institut für Verfahrenstechnik und Verpackung IVV, several tests were performed that confirmed the outstanding cleaning efficiency of the mechanical recycling technology for polystyrene to remove impurities from the use phase and waste streams. Purity levels of 99.9% and more of the polystyrene recyclate were achieved.

A recent Life Cycle Assessment study focusing on closed-loop recycling routes back to food contact quality also found that recycling polystyrene food packaging delivered significant savings of CO2 emissions (up to 80%) compared to the incineration of used polystyrene and the production of new (virgin) polystyrene.

Alternative forms of packaging do not offer the same unique circularity capacity to be recycled back to their original food contact applications with multiple recycling cycles, leading to a high volume of waste and a less favourable environmental footprint2. They also do not offer the same capacity to extend closed-loop food contact recycling to other applications.

EPS recycling

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is also 100% recyclable. This lightweight plastic foam is used in insulation as well as in food and appliance packaging cycling helmets and other applications.

Waste EPS packaging is mechanically recycled and then reused in various applications, including as an additive for the plaster and mortar industry, in seat cushions, and as a levelling compound in flooring. EPS waste can also be converted back into a raw material, polystyrene regranulate, which can then be used to manufacture insulation boards, furniture and other applications.

In Italy, AIPE (Italian Association of Expanded Polystyrene) has launched “Porto a Porto”, a project to recycle thousands of EPS fish boxes in Italian ports. The boxes are collected and transported to specialist EPS recycling centres where they are processed and transformed into new raw materials for use in new applications.

For EPS insulation it is common practice that construction site cut offs are taken back for recycling.

PSLoop is a pioneering project in the Netherlands which recycles EPS insulation by safely removing a legacy additive so the polystyrene can be reused. By recycling, rather than incinerating the EPS, CO2 emissions are reduced by 50%.

The potential of polystyrene recycling

Investment in product innovation and advances in recycling technologies show that there is potential for all polystyrene and EPS waste to be eliminated in the future. Across Europe, efforts have been made by governments and the industry to realise the potential of using high-quality, closed-loop recycling to achieve full circularity.

Sweden is one of the world leaders in plastic recycling. The country has invested heavily in Site Zero, a facility which will use cutting-edge technology to recycle all plastic packaging from Swedish households, including polystyrene and EPS, and make plastics completely circular – without any CO2 emissions.

In France, the polystyrene value chain has jointly signed the Charte PS –  a clear and stepwise commitment to achieving the full circularity of polystyrene packaging, including a target of collecting and sorting 100% of polystyrene packaging by 2025. 

In Belgium, in the port of Antwerp, Indaver is building a Plastics2Chemicals facility, which will recycle approximately 650,000 tonnes of end-of-life plastics. The recycling process is a thermochemical one whereby long carbon chains in the plastic are reduced or depolymerised. The materials that are released are basic raw materials with specifications that are equal to the materials extracted from fossil streams. The quality requirements satisfy food industry standards. This is a textbook example of the circular economy.  


  1. [1] Wood Group UK Limited, Socio-economic analysis of styrene-based food contact materials, commissioned by Plastics Europe, December 2021. ↩︎
  2. Ibid. ↩︎