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NextLooPP is a pioneering project of Nextek, which aims to close the cycle of food grade polypropylene and break new boundaries before COP26. The United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31st to November 12th.

The multi-person NextLooPP project has now announced the results of its very successful tracer-based classification test held in Tomla, Germany in September 2021. 

The test specifically to classify food-grade plastic packaging waste is based on the actual packaging submitted by the NextLooPP project members. When mixed with 20% non-food packaging, they focused on determining the selectivity of sorting these packages, and the result was a sorting purity of up to 99.9% at maximum production speed.

This is particularly impressive because it demonstrates for the first time how the integrated technology of marking container labels and near infrared (NIR)/visible light automatic sorters can work together at full speed in a real environment. The results are predicted based on early trials; however, the container in this trial is not the brand owner's container, so confirming these results in the pilot is very good.

The sorting belt runs at a speed of 2.5 meters per second, and the conveyor width per meter exceeds 2 tons per hour. For American readers, this is 8.2 feet per second, which is more than 2.2 tons per hour per 39.4 inch wide conveyor belt.

The results show that Nextek's unique technology can effectively distinguish food packaging from non-food packaging to meet the standards required by the UK and EU food standards authorities. The ability to identify and classify any number of packaging variants from bleach bottles to any plastic type milk bottles is the world's first, and it will change the way we recycle large amounts of disposable post-consumer food packaging waste into recycling applications.

The announcement marked that NextLooPP's plan to close the food-grade polypropylene (PP) cycle has been implemented for 12 months, which is the largest plastic part in the fast-moving consumer goods field. In the UK alone, 210,000 tons/231,485 tons of food grade PP (FGPP) packaging are used in cans, basins, trays and films every year. This cutting-edge innovation creates a way to recycle PP into food packaging.

This also heralds a new era in the plastic packaging recycling industry and the NextLooPP PolyPRISM marking system has been verified as "plug and play" and can be used for commercial purposes on Tomra's sorting equipment.

The test plan is to be further expanded in early 2022 to install a series of fully developed commercial labels on the products to further confirm the performance of the PolyPRISM sorting technology.

The classification of plastic waste into polymer types is the first of three important steps required to close the PP cycle and create a global low-carbon economy. The next step is to separate the plastic packaging into food and non-food parts. The last step involves NextLooPP's patented decontamination process PPristine, which opens up the polypropylene recycling market for food packaging.

The team believes that they can prove that packaging resins are free of contaminants and that they will meet all migration requirements of EFSA and the US FDA. These requirements include the use of food simulants to perform related tests on various foods, as well as testing temperatures from frozen to 121°C/250°F for all types of water-based and acidic foods. Due to the lipophilic properties of PP as a polymer, the temperature compliance of fatty foods will be reduced.

Equally important are the specific changes that the European Commission will make to food-level regulations, as they shift the focus to the migration of substances from packaging to food, rather than focusing on the previous nature of the material.

If NextLooPP label technology is adopted by British brand owners and retailers, it will be good news; if so, the circular NextLooPP technology may be on the shelves within two years. Considering that the annual recycling of 63,000 tons/69,446 tons of PP will reduce at least 105,600 tons/116,404 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year in the UK, this is good news.

NextLooPP is expected to become a catalyst to change the recycling of current food-grade PP packaging and become the next successful case of food-grade recycling. PET was the first, and now it's time for PP.

Dr. Edward Kosior has more than 45 years of plastic recycling expertise, including 23 years of academics and 23 years of industry work experience. Kosior has played an important role in the design of many modern recycling plants and has achieved a number of patent recycling breakthroughs. He founded Nextek in 2004 to provide consulting services to help develop a strategic approach to sustainable packaging.

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