Designing for Circularity: Advancing Recyclable Packaging on Global Recycling Day 2026
Global Recycling Day 2026 challenges us to rethink waste as opportunity: driving innovation in how materials are designed, used, and recovered. At Kuraray America, Inc., this opportunity begins at the source, with advanced materials engineered to deliver both high performance and compatibility with existing polyethylene film recycling streams. As expectations across the value chain continue to rise, solutions that align with real-world infrastructure are essential to advancing circularity in packaging.
The following Q&A explores how Kuraray America's EVAL™ ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) APR Design® Recognition is helping translate this opportunity into practical, scalable solutions for the industry.
What Drives the Need for Recycling Innovation?
For packaging that cannot be reused, recycling is a critical solution enabling a circular value chain for materials.
- Consumers are increasingly aware of sustainability practices that focus on circularity, recycling, and renewable sourcing.
- In response to growing consumer and regulatory pressure, major brand owners and large retail chains have announced sustainable packaging goals.
Meeting those goals requires materials that deliver both performance and end-of-life compatibility with recycling infrastructure. At Kuraray America, we believe recyclability and sustainability starts in the research and development lab.
We are proud that the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) has awarded EVAL™ ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) its APR Design® Recognition, confirming our EVOH meets APR’s design‑for‑recyclability criteria for compatibility with polyethylene film recycling streams.
What is APR Recognition and Why does It Matter?
The APR is a leading voice of the plastics recycling industry in North America, representing the entire value chain from collection to end markets. APR Design® for Recyclability Recognition is an engineering-based assessment of the technical compatibility of a packaging component or complete structure with today’s plastics recycling processes. It is not a general sustainability label – it is a rigorous, data-driven evaluation that the recycling industry relies on when making sorting and processing decisions.
The Critical Guidance pathway is APR’s most stringent evaluation method. An independent review committee assesses comprehensive data to determine whether a material can be sorted, processed, and remanufactured into high-quality post-consumer recycled resin without negatively impacting the recycling stream. EVAL™ EVOH earned recognition through this pathway.
APR Design® Recognition addresses design compatibility with recycling systems and does not guarantee collection, acceptance, or recycling outcomes in all jurisdictions.
How does APR Recognition Support Real-World Recycling?
APR guidelines serve as a common language across the packaging value chain.
- Recyclers use them to evaluate which materials are safe to accept.
- Converters reference them to evaluate how their design structures will perform at end of life.
- Brand owners rely on them to support sustainability claims and How2Recycle labeling decisions.
When a material earns APR Design® Recognition, it signals that the product has been independently verified against the industry’s widely accepted recyclability criteria.
Globally, APR works to align with other frameworks such as the RecyClass. In Europe, RecyClass and CEFLEX provide parallel recyclability guidance for EVAL™ EVOH use in certain applications. That guidance has been harmonized through aligned design-for-recycling criteria with recyclability assessments of up to 6 percent EVOH content across polyolefin streams.
What makes EVAL™ EVOH Different?
For decades, Kuraray’s EVAL™ EVOH resin has set the standard for barrier performance. With oxygen barrier properties up to 10,000 times stronger than polyethylene, it keeps food fresh, preserves flavor, and extends shelf life. This superior protection can support reduced resource consumption, less food waste, and improve resource efficiency throughout the value chain.
Kuraray was the first company in the world to produce and commercialize EVOH, starting in Okayama, Japan in 1972 and marketing it under the EVAL™ trade name. Production expanded to Pasadena, Texas in 1986 and Antwerp, Belgium in 1999. Today, Kuraray operates the world’s largest EVOH production facility in Pasadena at 58,000 tons per year, supported by technical centers in Japan, the U.S., Europe, and Singapore. More than 50 years of barrier innovation stand behind every EVAL™ EVOH grade produced today.
Designed for Performance, Engineered for Recyclability
The packaging industry has long faced a fundamental challenge: striking a balance between barrier performance and recyclability.
Multilayer films use different polymers to protect sensitive products from oxygen, moisture and contamination. These structures are essential for food safety and shelf life, but sometimes create challenges at material recovery facilities where sorting systems are designed to identify single-material streams.
For years, the industry treated high-barrier performance and recyclability as competing priorities.
While multilayer films are essential for food and medical packaging, they can complicate recycling processes.
Through innovative downgauging techniques, Kuraray America now delivers the same protection using approximately less than six percent EVAL™ in polyethylene structures, keeping designs well within APR, RecyClass, and CEFLEX guidelines.
Third-party testing according to APR’s rigorous Critical Guidance test method confirmed that unprinted, unlaminated PE films containing up to 15 percent EVAL™ EVOH (at or above 27 mol percent), with a 1:1 layer ratio, meet established recyclability criteria. The review committee reviewed our data and confirmed that EVAL™ EVOH structures can successfully flow through existing polyethylene (PE) film recycling streams when used within these parameters.
While near-infrared sorting is not yet commonly employed in the US for PE film streams, trials by TOMRA demonstrated that PE/EVOH/PE coextruded films were identified as polyethylene and sorted correctly into PE streams. These results provide confidence that such structures can be compatible with future PE film recycling streams in the US.
Circular Solutions Across Packaging Applications
- In flexible food packaging, PE-based structures with a thin EVAL™ EVOH barrier layer (typically 3 to 5 percent) can extend shelf life for fresh meat, cheese, ready meals, and coffee, among others while remaining compatible with certain polyethylene recycling streams.
- In rigid and semi-rigid formats, EVAL™ EVOH at 6 percent or less is compatible with HDPE recycling streams under both APR and RecyClass guidelines.
- In flexible packaging, EVAL™ EVOH also offers an alternative to aluminum foil, which can be difficult to recycle and limits end-of-life options.
By switching to EVAL™ EVOH-based structures, brands can improve material recovery, simplify supply chains, and potentially be more prepared in anticipation of evolving extended producer responsibility requirements.
What this Means for Brands, Recyclers, and the Industry?
The APR Design® Recognition signals that the industry can move beyond traditional trade-offs to deliver solutions that meet certain performance requirements while supporting circular economy.
- For brand owners, it provides independent verification of sustainability claims and How2Recycle labeling decisions.
- For recyclers, it confirms that structures containing an EVAL™ EVOH layer containing up to 15 percent (at or above 27 mol percent) are compatible within PE recycling streams.
- For converters, it demonstrates the recyclability of EVAL™ in PE streams.
Advancing Circularity, Together
Recyclability in high-barrier packaging depends on collaboration across the entire value chain – from resin producers and converters to brand owners, recyclers, and standards-setting organizations. Kuraray America works closely with converters and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies to develop recyclable packaging systems, backing each project with design guides, test data, and real-world validation.
Independent testing partnerships reinforce this approach. TOMRA’s NIR sorting technology and the APR’s Critical Guidance evaluation provide third-party confirmation that EVAL™ performs within the recycling industry’s defined parameters. Kuraray’s technical centers in Japan, the U.S., Europe, and Singapore support customers from initial structural design through recyclability validation.
Looking Ahead: From Recognition to Impact
This recognition directly supports our Kuraray Group’s Medium Term Strategic Plan ‘Passion 2026’, which places products, people and the planet at the center of innovation.
We're expanding the possibilities in sustainable packaging without compromising protection or performance. At Kuraray America, we are actively pursuing sustainable manufacturing, the creation of a circular-economy business, and innovation-driven differentiation.
APR Design® Recognition for EVAL™ EVOH is a direct outcome of that strategy, translating Kuraray’s R&D investment into independently verified, market-ready results.
The APR recognition reinforces a century-long principle that has guided Kuraray since its founding in 1926: delivering materials that serve both people and the planet.
Standing ovation to Edgard Chow David Hagen