Educating yourself on sustainable practices and incorporating them into your life is important – but it is easy to get confused with industry terminology. To take that next step, let’s look at what some of these common terms mean.
Barrier Coating: a material that is designed to prevent or significantly reduce the penetration of water, oils, water vapor, or gases as desired. Barrier materials may serve to exclude or retain such elements without or within a package. Barriers often serve to extend the shelf life of food products.
Chemical Recycling: A process changing the chemical structure of plastic waste, converting it into shorter molecules, ready to be used for new chemical reactions.
Compostability: A 90% breakdown of products by microbes into CO2, water, and nutrients within a six-month timeframe and with no harmful residuals (EN 13432).
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): a policy approach under which producers are given a significant responsibility— financial and/or physical— for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products.
Material Recovery Facility: are specialized facilities that receive, separate, and prepare recyclable materials. Upon sortation, these materials are sold and sent onwards to processing facilities.
Mechanical Recycling: refers to operations that aim to recover plastic waste via mechanical processes (grinding, washing, separating, drying, re-granulating, and compounding). In mechanical recycling, polymers stay intact.
Plastic Film: is a thin continuous polymeric material used to separate areas or volumes, hold items, act as barriers, or provide a printable surface.
Pyrolysis: a process that breaks down plastics into hydrocarbons by submitting them to high temperatures (350-800C) and a lack of oxygen. Products of pyrolysis include oils, waxes, metals, and sludge or carbon char.
Upcycling: is the process of transforming by-products or waste materials, into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.
To learn about more useful industry –terms and their definitions, click here!
