TekniPlex Healthcare will give a presentation on the emerging relevance of recycled plastics in pharmaceutical packaging at the 9th annual Pharma Packaging & Labeling Innovation Forum, 5-6th October in Berlin.
At the conference – whose agenda features lectures from pharmaceuticals and packaging experts from around the world – Michiel van den Berg, TekniPlex Healthcare’s global head of product management, will present Pharma-Grade Recycled Plastic for Primary Packaging: GMP & Pharmacopoeia-compliant Solutions.
Van den Berg will give his address to event goers on 5th October at 4:50pm. Among other themes, his goal with the presentation is to explore the various recycling processes and their pharmaceutical compliance levels in an industry that, historically, has shown hesitance to adopt newer, more sustainable plastics into packaging applications – particularly primary packaging solutions.
Most notably, due to longstanding norms and manufacturing limitations, many pharmaceutical industry players are still operating under the assumption that primary packaging cannot be comprised of recycled plastic. Given recent advancements in plastics recycling, however, the new reality is far more nuanced, allowing opportunities for meaningful sustainability gains without sacrificing product protection or patient safety.
In his presentation, Van den Berg will explore a variety of modern recycling methods – including mechanical recycling, depolymerisation, and chemical recycling – and the role each can play in the raw materials stream for pharma-grade plastics. In doing so, he will cover details including the difference between molecular-level certified percentages of recycled content versus the mass balance percent certified recycled content in pharmaceutical packaging components. He also will provide examples of pharmaceutical-ready solutions that contain recycled content and, crucially, are themselves recyclable – a lifespan extension key to moving toward comprehensive plastics circularity.
The current regulatory landscape reveals the urgency of Van den Berg’s topic. For example, late last year the European Commission proposed amending its Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive into a full-fledged regulation, setting elevated sustainability standards for packaging materials.
While the pharmaceuticals sector will likely be granted postponements in meeting certain guidelines in the short-term, such looming mandates will require near-term innovation to meet longer-term compliance. The incorporation of recycled plastics into a wide range of pharma packaging applications – including various forms of primary packaging – will invariably play a major role in meeting more stringent sustainability rules.