As a leader in the journey toward a circular economy, Berry is working towards producing certified FDA material to give plastic multiple lives through recycling. Next month, Berry will break ground on a new recycling facility in Leamington Spa, United Kingdom, working towards certified FDA post-consumer recycled polypropylene (rPP) for use in packaging. This new facility will not only recycle used plastics, but it will also wash, sort, and sift them to produce food-grade materials with a remarkable target purity standard of 99.9%.

Circular Materials Expertise

CleanStream® is Berry’s proprietary, world-leading process, which will deliver a best-in-class closed-loop system to mechanically process domestically recovered household waste polypropylene back into consumer packaging. This highly innovative facility will pave the way for the future of rPP packaging using automated sorting processes, integrating online sensor technologies and machine learning algorithms to separate PP containers, tubs, and trays with high accuracy.

As one of the world’s leading plastic packaging manufacturers, Berry is well-positioned to foster circularity. This investment is complementary to Berry’s previous work in securing record quantities of circular resins through advanced recycling and unmatched buying power. Through continually increasing access and demand for recycled materials, Berry is helping its customers reach their sustainability goals.

Environmental Benefits

The team at Berry has conducted an initial lifecycle assessment quantifying the benefits of its proposed rPP process over the use of virgin PP. The material from through the CleanStream® process has an 80% lower CO2 footprint than virgin resin. Packaging produced from this rPP material will be:

  • 35% lower in CO2 emissions
  • require 50% less water consumption
  • 60% less in acidification
  • 90% less in fossil fuel resource usage

The new Leamington plastic recycling facility will be housed in a purpose-built, net-zero carbon, centrally located 13,000m2 facility, offsetting CO2 emissions with local tree planting.