As your packaging portfolio grows and regulations evolve to become more complex, manually assessing recyclability is no longer optional.

A more modern approach to assess the recyclability of your ever-growing packaging portfolio is to use a Packaging Sustainability Management Platform.

But why should you opt for one? What problems is it going to solve? This article unpacks the limitations of traditional recyclability assessments and explains how Recyda’s digital platform offers a smarter, more efficient approach.

Why Conventional Recyclability Methods Fall Short?

Here’s how using conventional methods and not analysing recyclability through a digital platform could be costing you not only money, but also time, accuracy, and insight.

Tough to manage increasing complexity

Too many SKUs and too many regulations! Sounds familiar right? (German Minimum Standard, RecyClass, RAM, COTREP, to name a few examples of the numerous recognised guidelines for recyclability).

Initially, you can manually assess the recyclability of a single (or few) packaging units conveniently.

However, when it comes to managing thousands of SKUs across multiple countries, manually keeping track of packaging regulations no longer remains feasible.

Packaging regulations are complex and detailed

Packaging regulations are not straightforward, and they are evolving to become more complex. Each regulation has its own criteria for determining recyclability.

To understand how your packaging measures up, you often need to invest significant time and resources into reading, researching, and interpreting the specifics of each guideline. Furthermore, each guideline differs from the other and rules cannot be applied interchangeably.

No clear, single view of your portfolio

You might already be aware of the recyclability of your current packaging, but with thousands of SKUs, it might be tough to keep track of and visualise them in one place.

Without a clear view of your current portfolio, it gets difficult to make strategic optimisation decisions. You also are less likely to identify opportunities to benefit from cost savings due to eco-modulation. Internal knowledge sharing suffers as well.

Non-compliance risks

With no central place to keep track of evolving regulations, the risk of non-compliance increases which could lead to fines, market bans and reputational damage.

This is because you often adopt a reactive approach to managing non-compliance, which is not the best. You would rather want to follow a proactive approach to anticipate regulatory changes beforehand, and forecast its impact on your portfolio.

Why Use a Digital Platform to Assess the Recyclability of Your Packaging Portfolio?

To overcome the previously mentioned challenges, you can analyse the recyclability of your portfolio more efficiently and effectively by using a Packaging Sustainability Management Platform like Recyda.

Here’s how it enables you to assess recyclability across multiple regulations in one central platform, gain clear visibility and identify opportunities for improvement.

Digitalise your packaging portfolio

You can add your packaging composition data to the platform using an intuitive interface, or by uploading existing files, or importing via an API.

You can define packaging specifications and optionally provide additional details such as the layers, material used, weight, dimensions, etc.

The end result, you can maintain a digital copy of your entire packaging portfolio in a centralised platform.

Assess your packaging against a range of global regulations

Unlike simple online tools that restrict you to specific guidelines, with Recyda you can assess packaging recyclability against regulations from over 20 countries, including major guidelines like the German Minimum Standard, UK RAM, CEFLEX, COTREP and more.

Moreover, an interactive, regulation-specific questionnaire guides you through the details of the regulation and the methodology of the results produced. Most of the information here is pre-filled smartly by the platform based on the packaging composition you entered in the previous step, and information entered once is reused across other relevant guidelines so that the effort to input data is very limited.

This whole process helps save your time by eliminating the need to go through legal documentation and design for recycling documents, so you can instead focus on making sustainability decisions faster. It also provides you with more insight on what parts of the guidelines apply to the packaging you are assessing.

Get an instant recyclability result

Once you have chosen the regulations applicable for you and provided the required information, the system automatically generates a recyclability score (or recyclability class, etc.) for your packaging.

You can also access additional relevant information on applicable regulations, useful resources, data gaps and much more, all within the platform.

Visualise and compare across your entire portfolio

You can assess not just individual packaging units, but also gain a comprehensive view of your entire portfolio’s recyclability through intuitive dashboards.

This helps you prioritise areas for improvement, manage non-compliance risks and uncover eco-modulation opportunities that may lead to cost savings.

Sustainability management beyond recyclability; including EPR assessments and more

Recyda offers the complete suit for Packaging Sustainability Management, and hence offers much more than providing recyclability assessments.

You can also use the platform to calculate and forecast EPR and plastic taxes, improve data reporting and analyses, generate and compare prototypes for R&D, and do much more.

If you're considering transitioning your recyclability analysis to a digital platform, feel free to reach out—our experts are here to answer your questions.