After a rocky couple of years for film recyclers, recent pilot work is moving the notoriously challenging sector forward, and it is positioned to scale in the coming years. They’re also urgently teeing up compliance with California’s looming extended producer responsibility for packaging law, speakers discussed at the Packaging Recycling Summit on June 16.
Recycling rate requirements in state EPR laws, especially in California, are putting pressure on producers to achieve certain thresholds, or face fines or potential material bans come 2032. With producer responsibility organization Circular Action Alliance poised to begin implementing California’s program plan, there is a “growing recognition that this ban on non-recyclable packaging is real, and we need to be doing something about it,” said Patrick Keenan, a sustainable packaging engineer focused on R&D at General Mills.
Multiple groups formed last year to guide participants across the value chain in establishing and scaling film recycling operations: CalFFLex, an initiative of The Recycling Partnership’s Film and Flexibles Recycling Coalition, and the nonprofit US Flexible Film Initiative.
Market development is a pressing focal point. USFFI has worked with MRFs and reprocessors since December 2025 to identify viable end markets, and as of mid-June reported helping to move 1.5 million pounds of film from California to end markets nationwide.
“According to the needs assessment, California recycles about 66 million to 70 million pounds of film, and that's a 5% recycling rate. So it looks like we maybe increased the recycling rate in California by an entire percentage point in the last six months,” said Keenan, who is on USFFI’s board. He noted that if CAA believes this model works with their program plan, more money from EPR fees potentially could flow into the film space and help to increase the recycling rate.
“Recycling is kind of in a make-or-break moment.”
Raj Bagaria
Managing director at GDB Circular
Flexible plastic packaging needs to meet the requirements in California’s law and avoid a ban because its performance makes it essential in the packaging space, hence its growing market share, said Teo Medellin, director of global corporate packaging sustainability at Procter & Gamble. “It's there for a reason: Because it works.”
Despite flexibles’ prevalence in the marketplace, film is recycled at much lower rates than other types of plastic, said John Nygaard, director of quality and technical services at flexible packaging manufacturer Glenroy, Inc. “That industry gap has to be closed.”
Part of the problem is the tough economics for plastic film recyclers, speakers said. Numerous competitors haven’t fared well over the last year, said Raj Bagaria, managing director at film reclaimer GDB Circular. One example is WM closing its Natura PCR plant in Texas. Another is Myplas USA's closure in 2024 just months after opening in Minnesota; GDB Circular ended up buying that and making it a flagship facility.
“Recycling is kind of in a make-or-break moment, and the next 12 months — from here onwards — will be very important,” Bagaria said. Domestic industry participants will need to establish their capacity for recycling film and generating postconsumer recycled material, he said.
For now, the economic challenges and sparse infrastructure for handling flexible film require intentional incentives, speakers said, including from EPR and PCR mandates. Eventually, as the customer base expands and prices calibrate, the market should stabilize and no longer need to be subsidized, Keenan said. “But I suspect we're years away from that.”
Designing plastic film packaging better from the start is key, speakers said, such as developing designs that incorporate postconsumer recycled content to ensure a demand pipeline for recyclers. Although EPR programs coming online will cost producers money no matter what, “we can mitigate those costs by designing better packaging,” Keenan said.
While some designers feel boxed in by PCR constraints or challenges, “it opens some other degrees of freedom for design that we're not tapping into,” Medellin said. Developing new sustainable designs will help the system achieve scale and keep costs in check, he said. But that might require a transition for people in the industry who are accustomed to working with virgin materials.
“We are going to need to start thinking: How do we design with recycled materials?” Medellin said.
