Design for recycling
A product's environmental impact is greatly influenced by its design. Designing for recyclability means that materials can be easily and effectively recycled at the end of a product's life. As a result, less waste is sent to landfill or incineration. Instead, the materials can be reused or recycled in the manufacture of new products. In this way, recycling reduces the need to extract virgin raw materials.
This also leads to reduced impacts on land use and biodiversity, as well as on water and air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. For products with a short lifespan, such as single-use packaging, it is especially important that the resources used are not wasted. For materials such as metals and glass, which require significant resources to produce from virgin raw materials, it is valuable to ensure that they are easily recyclable.
How does the Nordic Swan Ecolabel contribute?
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel promotes design for recycling by setting requirements for both products and their packaging. In order to facilitate recycling, the focus is on:
- Design for disassembly of materials.
- Promotion of mono-material products, components, and packaging.
- Exclusion of materials that are not recyclable in Nordic recycling systems, such as biodegradable plastics.
- Strict requirements for material types, compatibility, purity, and composition.
- Clear user information on how materials should be recycled.
Environmental background
Recyclability is an important step in the transition to a circular economy. It provides an opportunity for materials to remain in the resource loop, thereby reducing the need for virgin resources. Some materials that are particularly resource-intensive to extract and produce, such as metals and glass, should be easy to separate and sort. The extent to which a material is recycled depends on many factors, including sorting technologies and how consumers ultimately sort their waste. The quality of the recycled material is also important in order to meet demand and enable a wide range of potential applications. By excluding harmful chemical substances from products and packaging, broader future use and greater circularity of materials can be achieved.
For example, recyclability can be promoted through the use of transparent plastic, which offers a wider range of recycling options than black or strongly coloured plastics. Dark plastics can also be more difficult to detect during the sorting process. Labels on plastic packaging can interfere with recycling in a similar way, especially when a label is made from a different material than the packaging and covers a large proportion of its surface.
Labels on plastic packaging can interfere with the recycling process in a similar way, especially if a label is made from a different material than the packaging, covers a large amount of its surface and is not easily washed away.
The quality of recycled materials can be negatively affected if inappropriate types of materials enter recycling streams. For instance, biodegradable plastics cannot be recycled in Nordic waste systems and may disrupt the recycling process. Products and packaging consisting of combined, non-separable materials may also hinder waste sorting or contaminate recycled materials.