Project Beyond Plastic
What should replace today's multi-layer plastic packaging?
Why does this matter?
Multi-layer films protect food brilliantly and can be recycled almost nowhere. The performance is real, which is exactly why the problem persists.
What exists today?
Mono-material films, paper barriers and compostables. Each trades away barrier performance, shelf life or cost.
What prevents it?
A replacement has to survive the same duty — oxygen, moisture, grease, heat — and the same end of life, at food-industry prices.
Why hasn't this happened?
Difficult problems stay difficult for reasons. Naming them is the first honest step.
What needs to change?
- Barrier performance in a single recyclable material.
- Sealing on existing production lines.
- Reprocessing routes that already exist at scale.
- Shelf-life evidence, not laboratory optimism.
Possible disciplines
Future collaborators
Learning log
- Sorting
Most sorting difficulty is designed in upstream, years before the bin.
Research network
Nothing exists alone.
Related questions
- Can materials explain themselves?
- Can recycling be solved by better materials rather than better sorting?
Our Promise
We don't claim to have the answers.
We promise to ask questions worth exploring, test ideas honestly, publish what we learn, and build practical prototypes where we believe they can make a meaningful difference.