The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) announced the public launch of the APR Design® Assessment Tool powered by Recyda. This new digital platform automates the APR Design® Guide for Plastics Recyclability, the gold standard for designing plastic packaging compatible with the North American recycling system for over three decades. The tool helps companies quickly and accurately assess the technical recyclability of plastic packaging and portfolios, flag missing information and design optimizations, and evaluate compliance with California’s Labeling Law, SB343. Add-on features will also allow companies to calculate Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees in applicable US and Canadian regions.
As EPR laws and labeling requirements expand across North America, companies face increasing pressure to demonstrate that their packaging meets recyclability requirements. Many recycling requirements are based on APR Design® Guidance: Canadian Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) have aligned on the APR Design® Guide as the authority for plastic packaging design guidance, California requires alignment with the APR Design® Guide in its EPR (SB 54) and Labeling (SB 343) laws, and several other states use APR as the benchmark for recyclable plastic packaging design.
To help companies prepare for and comply with these upcoming regulations, APR partnered with a leader in sustainable packaging software solutions, Recyda, to connect the technical guidance of the APR Design® Guide with a robust software platform that automated the assessment process. The APR Design® Assessment Tool guides users through a series of steps to understand packaging makeup and recyclability. It identifies missing information, highlights potential design incompatibilities, recommends opportunities to improve recyclability, and assigns an APR Design® classification: Preferred Design for Recycling, Tolerated but Needs Improvement, Non-Recyclable, or Requires Testing. The tool will also issue a final classification of compliance with SB 343, including all four criteria within the law.
