Pharma’s Unique Packaging Dilemma and Creative Ways Around it

Industries across sectors are challenged to meaningfully cut virgin plastic in their packaging—with pharma possibly steering down the toughest road. The characteristics required to ensure materials’ safety –  like robust airtight, light- and moisture-proof barriers— come with properties that make them difficult to recycle. Trying to incorporate recycled content that meets pharmacopeia’s standards adds more challenges.

But new innovations are emerging as supply chain partners team to make designing for recyclability and adding recycled content more reachable.

Here is some of what resin suppliers are up against in trying to help drug companies shrink their carbon footprint: the packaging is already lightweight; making it even leaner without compromising performance is difficult.

Getting ahold of massive volumes of medical-grade recycled content is not easy either. There’s limited postconsumer resin out there suited for applications that will have primary contact with drugs, so the search for feedstock and new processes to make it are ongoing.

Potential contamination is a worry—think of packaging designed to protect sterile, liquid-filled injectable devices. But contamination is also a concern downstream; packaging that may have come in contact with hazardous materials or bodily fluids complicates collections, transport, and processing.  

“Medical-grade postconsumer resin volumes are limited due to both technical and economic reasons. For instance, from a technical stand, medication blisters [pill packs] contain different materials. And flexible packaging, commonly used in pharmacies, is not currently recyclable curbside,” says Paula Leardini, circular plastics manager at the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC).

Michiel van den Berg, director, global product management for TekniPlex, touches on pharmacopoeia standards that stipulate quality attributes for plastic components.

“It is all about purity. There is a very limited list of additives that can be used. And the testing is rigorous,” he says.

TekniPlex, who supplies pharmaceutical companies with film for thermoformed packaging, has been hammering away on the sustainability front.

In partnership with petrochemical company Alpek Polyester, it’s developed a pharmaceutical-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) blister film with chemically recycled content. These pre-forms, composed of a plastic cavity and a pliable lid, are fully recyclable—lid and all— where collections and processing exist.

Mono-material structures with a single-chemical makeup like the blister film innovation are bypassing barriers to recyclability that come into play when combining multiple materials that don’t conform or identify as a single polymer.

In another move away from multiple layers, TekniPlex has come up with new closure liners (thin material that creates a seal between a container and its closure) that go into bottle configurations.

“If a closure is a certain polymer grade like polypropylene (PP), we design liners to be as close to PP as possible, so recycling is not hindered,” van den Berg says.

Leardini, like others watching pharma work to raise its sustainability game, expects more change, and touches on other new trends.

“Already, we’re seeing a noticeable increase in industry collaborations for pharmaceutical packaging. Several players have been coming onboard to increase collection through education and drop-off bins in pharmacies. They’ve also been engaging with logistics partners, aligning with recyclers to guarantee that these materials are accepted, and identifying end-markets for pharmaceutical waste.”

Plastic Ingenuity creates pharmaceutical packaging for over-the-counter products, tubs used in the filling process of pharmaceuticals, and sterile barrier packaging for injectable devices, among applications.

“We select the material best suited to protect the product, in the most sustainable way possible,” says Zach Muscato, corporate sustainability manager, Plastic Ingenuity.  That could be PET; Tritan, which is a BPA-free co-polyester; polystyrene; or high-density polyethylene, among resins.

The company’s thermoformed trays, used in the assembly of injectable devices to protect them during assembly, are working well in take-back programs since their end-of-life is confined to relatively few locations. Plastic Ingenuity partners with a recycler local to the drug manufacturer to collect the trays, grind them into flake, and then receives them at its plant to drop into new trays.

What are some of the problems the company has worked to solve for?

For one, figuring out how to deliver recyclable over-the-counter packaging that its clients distribute through retailers. This may include converting from a non-recyclable material like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to PET.

“PVC presents challenges, especially if it is sealed to itself, but we’ve developed innovative material solutions to overcome these challenges. The shift to PET also opens the door to use postconsumer recycled content,” Muscato says.  

Another problem solved is around ready-to-use tubs that protect syringes, vials, and cartridges used in pharmaceuticals.

“These products typically are packaged in an over-engineered, injection-molded tub. We designed a thermoformed version that still complies with the ISO design standard but uses 40 percent less plastic than the injection-molded version,” Muscato says.  

Some of the work is guided by another of the company’s inventions: a calculator that measures embodied carbon in its packaging. Ultimately, it’s helping its clients reduce their emissions.

As with everything tied to the push toward greater sustainability, policy is playing a role; and Europe is leading the way with its latest clampdowns on packaging. In April 2024, the European Parliament adopted the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).

The rule requires all packaging to be recyclable by specified dates, and that plastic in packaging contains a minimum percentage of recycled content, with the content requirements increasing incrementally over time.

Pharma has been given somewhat of a break. Packaging directly in contact with medicinal products, contact-sensitive packaging of medical devices, and in vitro diagnostic medical devices will be exempt from these requirements for a while. An initial proposed five-year extension has been changed to an indefinite timeline, but with a requirement to review that exemption along the way.

In the U.S., packaging is still mostly regulated at the state-level with only a few establishing minimal recycled content mandates, none of which include pharmaceutical packaging.

Pharmaceutical packaging is exempt in the few U.S. states that have passed extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, which require producers to take responsibility for their packaging at the end of its life.

“We still need to make progress in the U.S. regarding pharmaceutical packaging’s regulation and sustainability point. Hopefully, we can do so at the national level to support standardization and supply chain optimization,” Leardini says.

In the meantime, more drug companies and resin suppliers are anticipating changes as consumers and investors pay attention to what’s happening with plastic waste, and as state, federal, and international policy makers enact rules aimed directly at packaging at unprecedented levels.