A Framework for Necessary Design, Collection, and End-Market Levers
The Purpose of This Resource
Film and flexible packaging play an essential role in protecting products, extending shelf life, and delivering goods to consumers in a cost-effective way. At the same time, the lightweight nature and complex, multi-material designs common to many film packages create real challenges for collection, sorting, and recycling at scale. This new framework confronts those realities head-on—offering a pragmatic, actionable path forward grounded in today’s infrastructure, economics, and market conditions.
“Film and flexible packaging are critical to how products move through our economy and that means solving for their circularity is both necessary and complex,” said Crystal Bayliss, Interim Executive Director of the USPP. “This framework reflects the real work happening across the system today and provides a clear, shared path forward.”
– Crystal Bayliss, Interim Executive Director
U.S. Plastics Pact
End-market development is the most critical lever for change.
This Framework reinforces that there is no single, universal solution for film collection. Instead, successful strategies will vary based on community size, infrastructure, policy context, and local market dynamics. The framework highlights the need for multiple collection approaches alongside continued circular redesign. It includes specific calls to action for packaging manufacturers, packaging users, and policymakers. Together, these actions are intended to help galvanize the innovation, investment, and policy alignment needed to move film and flexible packaging toward circularity.