The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) and Canada’s Circular Plastics Taskforce (CPT) are announcing a partnership to improve North American plastics recycling systems through pilot and research projects. APR and the CPT share the common goal of enhancing plastics recycling capacities through better packaging design and technology improvements.

The APR has long recognized that significant, system-wide change is imperative to realize a circular economy for plastics. Through fostering innovation and collaboration, APR partners with the CPT in taking meaningful steps to develop solutions that maximize the volumes of all plastics that can be recycled and increase the use of recycled plastic content in products.

“The Circular Plastics Taskforce is helping to develop and implement sortation and recycling solutions in Canada for hard-to-recycle plastics in the context of extended producer responsibility programs across the country,” states Steve Alexander, APR president and CEO. “APR’s tools and resources are the starting point for enabling compatibility between package designs and the recycling infrastructure. By leveraging each organization’s strengths, we will help achieve an effective and robust plastics recycling system in Canada and beyond.”

The CPT focuses on a better alignment between market needs and the recycling value-chain to propose concrete solutions to optimize plastics management in a circular economy. It brings together industry leaders to evaluate and improve recovery and recycling of post-consumer plastics collected from Canadian households. Since its inception, the group’s collaborative approach has attracted support from government and industry partners across North America.

“Our common goal is to increase the use of recycled content in plastic packaging. For that to happen, we need improved sortation and recycling capacities, which are particularly needed for hard-to-recycle plastics such as flexibles and PET Thermoforms,” says Marie-Anne Champoux-Guimond, chair of the CPT’s Board of Directors. “Bringing APR’s packaging design expertise and industry perspective in our projects will complement our approach and unlock new opportunities for improvement across the value chain.”