According to Flexible Packaging Europe, members of the European Flexible Packaging Association (FPE) reached an agreement on the "sustainability Vision 2020" of flexible packaging at the first virtual conference, further strengthening the industry's common commitment to circular economy.

For a long time, the flexible packaging industry has been facing the challenge of sustainable development, especially the flexible packaging is made of controversial plastic materials. The new vision for sustainable development 2020 brings together the common voice from industry leading enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises. The European flexible packaging industry agreed to give full support to Europe's move towards a circular economy and a resource-saving economy, and make more efforts to achieve this goal.

"Vision for sustainable development 2020" of European flexible packaging industry mainly covers four goals: ecological design, recycling performance, zero waste and industry cooperation.

From design: maximum utility, minimum environmental footprint

The industry should pay attention to the environmental protection and ecological performance of packaging design, so as to minimize the impact on the environment in the whole life cycle of packaging.

Flexible packaging should continue to play an important role in food, medical and pharmaceutical, family and personal protective packaging to ensure the nutritional, health, hygiene and safety performance of products.

Flexible packaging design must realize the function of food protection, and help to minimize food waste. At present, food waste is a major environmental and economic challenge facing the world.

Packaging industry should vigorously promote life cycle thinking to assess the overall resource efficiency and environmental impact of products and packaging solutions. This overall design thinking can help enterprises make responsible decisions.

The European soft package industry is currently working with the European Commission to develop a project to jointly develop pefcr and LCI data. The project aims to develop reliable and recognized assessment tools to assess the environmental footprint of flexible packaging products.

Improve the circulation of flexible packaging

The soft package industry supports the vision of zero waste packaging circular economy. The collection, classification and recycling of flexible packaging should be carried out continuously, and should be continuously developed and upgraded.

Flexible packaging industry should actively optimize the packaging recyclability, so as to further improve the resource efficiency of flexible packaging. For example, FPE and its members are one of the members that initiated the flexible packaging circular economy (ceflex). Ceflex is jointly sponsored by a series of European enterprises and associations representing the whole value chain of flexible packaging. It aims to design and develop better system solutions through the cooperation of the whole value chain, so as to further improve the circular economy performance of flexible packaging.

Ceflex, an organization for recycling economy of flexible packaging, creates a circular economy of flexible packaging in terms of production, consumption, waste management and recycled packaging.

In order to realize the recyclability of all flexible packaging, it is necessary to redesign and innovate packaging design and post-processing technology.

Encourage new technologies for sorting and recycling, and promote their application throughout the European waste management infrastructure, provided all flexible packaging is properly collected.

The soft package industry should support the regulatory measures to promote the recycling economy of the packaging industry, and promote the development of infrastructure. At the same time, we should closely follow up the progress of European flexible packaging recyclability.

Zero leakage and zero waste disposal

Flexible packaging industry should regard the pollution of waste packaging to the marine and other natural environment as the key problem to be solved.

Flexible packaging manufacturers should strictly control the production process to prevent material leakage into the environment.

Properly collect all packaging waste and implement appropriate waste management in Europe and eliminate landfills.

In addition, it is also important to raise consumers' awareness of environmental protection and provide them with the right information.