BeFORE – Barrier for recycling

Sensitive products (food, personal care, pet food) require packaging with a sufficient barrier against detrimental environmental conditions to preserve their quality and shelf life. At the same time, the European Union and national legislative bodies set ambitious recyclability goals to be reached by 2030. Traditional barrier materials used in packaging are often at odds with these recyclability requirements. Also, the processing steps involved in the production of packaging often introduce damages to barrier layers, which reduce the functionality.
While new materials that promise both desired barrier properties and recyclability are available on the market, their novelty means that data on their practical fitness for purpose and how they are affected by processing are not generally abundant.
The objective and innovative target of BeFORE is to provide guidelines on how to design and test packaging materials that can be processed without losing their function, provide a high barrier and are recyclable. These guidelines will support an accelerated uptake of available innovative barrier materials for both plastic and paper substrates intended for contact sensitive goods as replacement for non-recyclable traditional composites.