This collaboration agreement is made up of the Gremi de la Recuperació de Catalunya, the Packaging Cluster, the UNESCO Chair of Life Cycle and Climate Change ESCI-UPF and Driade Environmental Solutions

The Alliance will allow certifying the degree of actual recyclability of packaging in all phases of its life cycle

Given the coincident interest in ensuring that packaging is designed following the precepts of recyclability necessary to achieve a high-quality recycled material and thus contribute to a real circular economy, the Gremi de la Recuperació de Catalunya, the Unesco Chair of the Cycle of Life and Climate Change ESCI-UPF, the Packaging Cluster and Dríade Environmental Solutions (DríadeSM), today signed a collaboration agreement framed within the methodology of the Certificate and Seal of Recyclability.

Through this agreement, and represented by the Gremi de la Recuperació de Catalunya, professionals in the packaging recovery and recycling sector will be active participants in the methodology and evaluations of recyclability carried out by DríadeSM. In this way, the evaluations carry out and the certificates issued will have the endorsement of this union, which brings together more than 300 companies dedicated to recovery and recycling, thus ensuring that the evaluations and the results obtained in them have been carried out in accordance with the recycling processes currently applied and available at the waste management plants.

On the other hand, the Packaging Cluster will promote, among its more than 80 associated companies, the carrying out of recyclability evaluations in order to improve the design of packaging and ensure its correct recycling, as well as a training offer on sustainability and recyclability of packaging.

The methodology of the Certificate and Seal of Recyclability is the first existing to measure the actual recyclability of packaging. In it, all the characteristics of the packaging design that can generate a decrease in the quantity or quality of recycled material are studied and quantified, taking into account all the phases of the process: consumption, collection, classification, recycling and final application.

The innovative aspect of this methodology is that the result measures not only the quantity of material available to be recycled again, but also the quality of the resulting material and its ability to incorporate it back into quality production cycles.

Companies that request these evaluations for their packaging will obtain a Recyclability Certificate and the Recyclability Seal ecolabel. In addition, the aforementioned entities offer companies a diagnosis of how to improve the design of the container to avoid that its characteristics interfere with the existing collection, selection and recycling processes, and thus achieve the maximum possible actual recyclability.

This methodology has been developed by DríadeSM and has had the scientific support of the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change ESCI-UPF, internationally renowned experts in the methodology and application of environmental assessments, ecodesign and ecolabelling programs. The Chair also participates in the continuous review of the methodology, improving each year based on the experience gained. In addition, it acts as external reviewer of each evaluation carried out by DriadeSM, regarding the procedures to be followed, thus guaranteeing the independence, seriousness, rigor and neutrality of the capacity of each container to be reincorporated into a quality production cycle.

SGS International Certification Services Ibérica, S.A.U., audits and endorses the process of granting the Certificate and the authorization to use the Seal.