In the drive to make flexible packaging more sustainable, technical performance cannot become an afterthought. Fitness for purpose must remain the starting point.
Every now and then, it is worth stepping back and considering what is really happening in the flexible packaging market.
After more than 40 years in this industry, I find myself asking a fairly uncomfortable question: why has such a highly specialised product come to be treated as a basic commodity?
Flexible packaging has been shaped by decades of innovation, development, technical challenges and significant market change. Yet much of today’s conversation appears to have been reduced to one word: sustainability.
Let me be clear: I am a strong advocate for sustainability. The industry needs to change, and I support the move towards a more circular packaging economy.
But I also believe the market has lost some perspective.
With the 2025 National Packaging Targets largely unmet, Australia is looking to developments in Europe, where the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is being presented as a major step forward. At home, work continues towards an effective extended producer responsibility framework.
But we need to recognise an important point: Australia is not Europe. We are a relatively small market with markedly different waste collection and recycling infrastructure.
Closing the circularity gaps
A circular system depends on several connected steps: collecting packaging, sorting it, recycling the plastic into usable material, converting that material into new products and returning those products to the market.
We have made progress in sorting and recycling technology, but significant questions remain. How do we collect soft plastics at scale? How do we recycle them economically and consistently? What do we do with the resulting material? Most importantly, where are the end markets?
Over the past five years, significant investment has been announced for soft-plastics recycling projects across Australia. We have also seen companies fail.
Producing granules or recycled material is only part of the equation. End markets remain limited for material recovered from complex, mixed-plastic waste streams.
We may be able to clean and separate some materials to produce relatively consistent polyolefin streams, but what happens to everything else?
Much of the flexible packaging consumed today still contains combinations of nylon, polyester, polypropylene, polyethylene, foil, paper, bio-based materials, inks and adhesives.
The ideal solution is to move towards mono-material structures, but we should not pretend we are already there. These materials still need to be printed and converted. In many applications, they also need to be laminated or coated. Each of those processes can affect recyclability.
Plenty of media coverage suggests the solutions are already at hand. Quite frankly, some of the claims amount to greenwashing.
For example, we have claims of recycled content in flexible packaging through mass balance and advanced recycling or chemical recycling (pyrolysis) being made here in Australia and New Zealand, but let’s not be fooled. It’s a complicated story and not as simple as it’s made out to be.
That is where I become concerned.
Performance under pressure
Packaging companies are making bold claims about mono-material structures as replacements for complex laminates, sometimes quoting barrier performance that does not appear realistic. Brand owners, meanwhile, are under understandable pressure to respond to sustainability targets.
Somewhere in the middle, the fundamental purpose of packaging risks being forgotten.
Packaging has one primary job: to protect the product. This is particularly important when the product is food.
The consequences of getting the structure wrong are not theoretical. An unsuitable material can compromise shelf life, product quality, food safety, manufacturing performance and, ultimately, the consumer experience.
Perhaps we need to return to basics.
Before deciding which packaging material we want, we should establish what the product requires. That means considering shelf life, barrier performance, machinability, distribution and storage conditions, food safety, consumer expectations and every stage of the supply chain.
Only once those requirements are understood can we determine which packaging structure is fit for purpose. Then – and only then – should we ask how it can be made more sustainable.
Too often, I see the process happening in reverse. A brand owner asks for “sustainable packaging”, a specification is developed primarily around that requirement, the packaging is produced and everyone moves on.
That is putting the cart before the horse.
Start with the product
Sustainability, circularity and waste reduction all matter, but none should come at the expense of packaging’s fundamental technical function.
After four decades in this industry, I still believe the best approach is remarkably simple: understand the product and its requirements, design packaging that performs, and then make it as sustainable as technically and commercially possible.
The industry does not need more marketing claims. It needs deeper technical understanding, viable infrastructure, genuine collaboration and decisions supported by evidence.
Flexible packaging has solved some extraordinarily difficult problems over the past 40 years. The challenge now is to ensure that, in our rush to solve the sustainability problem, we do not create another one.
About the author:
Joe Foster is an industry consultant and flexibles packaging expert; he serves on the executive board of the Australasian Institute of Packaging and is a sought-after educator on the topic. You can email him at joe@joefoster.com.au
