Romania is launching the national pilot project RoFlex, dedicated to assessing and improving the sorting and recycling of flexible packaging from household waste, a project which marks an important step in Europe's transition towards a circular economy.
According to a release sent to AGERPRES on Monday, flexible packaging ensures the protection and distribution of approximately half of the food consumed in Europe, as well as household goods and cosmetic, medical and pharmaceutical products. It keeps products fresh, nutritious, safe and uncontaminated, and remains among the most difficult types of packaging to collect and recycle efficiently.
The project, carried out in three Eco Bihor sorting stations and coordinated by CEFLEX, a European consortium for the circularity of flexible packaging, together with ARAM, the Romanian Association for Packaging and the Environment and a group of industry partners, will demonstrate practical ways to recover and recycle flexible packaging waste, while generating data and insights that can inform and guide future investments and policies.
The project is supported and funded by Amcor, Henkel, Mondelez Romania and PepsiCo Romania.
Over six months, the project will: sort and recycle flexible packaging waste from households beyond existing streams; assess how current systems can efficiently manage these materials to increase the recycling rate; analyse data on material flows, quality, costs and infrastructure needs; lay the groundwork for a partnership model between public authorities and private operators that can be replicated in Romania and across Europe.
Under Regulation (EU) 2025/40, as of 2030, all packaging must meet strict recyclability requirements and ultimately be recyclable on a large scale in order to be placed on the EU market.
For flexible packaging made from polymers such as PET, PE, PP or other plastics, including multilayer and multimaterial formats, the companies placing them on the market must prove that the existing infrastructure and processes can ensure each year a quantity of recycled material equal to or greater than 55 percent for each packaging category.
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