A winery in northern Italy has managed to send 91.7% of its plastic waste for recycling.

That is already a strong result.

But the more interesting number may be 30%.

That is the recycled-plastic content in the new film produced from the recovered material.

And when those two figures are placed alongside Europe’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, the Cantina Pizzolato-Aliplast project becomes more than a local recycling case.

It becomes a useful test of what the next stage of circular flexible packaging may actually require.

During 2025, Cantina Pizzolato supplied Aliplast with 19,810 kg of plastic film, mainly packaging and logistics films including pallet covers and stretch film.

A further 1,801 kg was handled through the local collection service.

Together, that represents 21,611 kg of plastic sent toward recycling.

According to the companies, this accounted for 91.7% of the winery’s plastic waste.

But Europe is moving toward a regulatory system where simply collecting and recycling a high percentage of film may no longer be enough.

The coming question will increasingly be:

Can the recovered polymer return as sufficiently high-quality packaging material—and how much single-use transport film will companies still be allowed to use at all?

That is where this small Treviso project becomes much more relevant to the wider flexible-packaging industry.

This Is Not Just Waste Collection

The distinction between collection and material recovery matters.

Cantina Pizzolato’s used plastic film is transported to Aliplast’s Istrana plant, where it is:

sorted,

washed,

ground,

and regenerated into plastic pellets.

Those pellets are subsequently used to manufacture new plastic film containing 30% recycled plastic and 70% virgin resin.

Aliplast has built its broader operating model around this type of integrated recovery system. The company describes its closed-loop process as collecting industrial plastic waste, cleaning and regenerating it, then converting the resulting material back into applications including flexible polyethylene film.

That is considerably more valuable than simply reporting that 21 tonnes of film were “recycled.”

For flexible-packaging producers, the harder part of circularity is usually not collecting a bale of polyethylene.

It is recovering material with sufficient consistency to put it back through an extrusion line and manufacture another film that still meets the mechanical requirements of the application.

Stretch and pallet films need strength and elasticity.

Poor-quality recycled feedstock can create problems involving:

gels,

contamination,

film breaks,

variable thickness,

lower stretch performance,

and unstable processing.

The companies say the new 30% recycled-content film retains the required strength and elasticity.

No independent performance data were provided with the announcement, so those technical claims should be treated as company-reported performance rather than independently verified test results.

But the industrial route itself is clear.

Used film is being treated as polymer feedstock rather than simply as waste.

The 91.7% Figure Also Reveals What Has Not Been Closed

There is another way to read the numbers.

If 21,611 kg represents 91.7% of the winery’s total plastic waste, the figures imply total plastic waste of roughly 23.6 tonnes during the year.

That means approximately 2 tonnes—or 8.3%—were not included in the recycling figure.

The companies do not provide enough information to determine what those remaining plastics were or how they were managed.

It would therefore be wrong to assume they were landfilled, incinerated or technically unrecyclable.

But the calculation is still useful.

It shows why the phrase “100% circular” should be used cautiously in packaging coverage.

A 91.7% recycling rate is substantial.

It is not 100%.

Likewise, the new film itself still contains 70% virgin material.

The project is therefore better described as a high-recovery circular film system rather than a completely closed material loop.

That distinction does not weaken the project.

It makes the result more credible.

The 30% Recycled Content Creates a PPWR Question

Here is where the regulatory story begins.

Under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, plastic packaging covered by the general category outside specified contact-sensitive applications is required to contain 35% recycled content by 2030, calculated as an average per manufacturing plant and year.

The requirement rises to 65% by 2040.

The recycled material must also meet requirements concerning post-consumer origin, collection and recycling, with the final calculation and verification methodology being defined through implementing rules.

At first glance, that creates an obvious comparison:

Pizzolato-Aliplast film: 30% recycled plastic

PPWR general 2030 benchmark: 35%

But we should not conclude that this particular film is therefore “5 percentage points short of compliance.”

The regulation does not work that simply.

The 35% requirement is calculated on an average basis per packaging type and format, manufacturing plant and year.

There are exemptions.

And whether the recovered Pizzolato material qualifies under the PPWR definition of post-consumer recycled content will depend on the applicable classification, documentation and final verification methodology.

So 30% should be viewed as an interesting benchmark—not as a regulatory compliance determination.

Still, the direction is obvious.

The commercial value of being able to collect clean industrial PE film and put it back into packaging-grade material is likely to increase as recycled-content requirements tighten.

Traceability May Become as Important as the Pellet

This is where Aliplast’s existing certification becomes relevant.

The recycler holds RecyClass Recycling Process and Recycled Plastics Traceability-related certifications covering its recycling processes and recycled-content verification.

Aliplast says its certification system allows recycled content in products such as PE flexible films to be documented and the recycling process traced from incoming waste to regenerated polymer.

That does not mean every Aliplast product automatically complies with every future PPWR obligation.

But it illustrates something that packaging buyers will increasingly need to understand:

a tonne of recycled polymer without traceable evidence may not carry the same regulatory value as a tonne whose origin and recycled-content percentage can be verified.

The market for recycled plastics is therefore likely to separate increasingly by quality and documentation.

Colour.

Contamination.

Polymer consistency.

Mechanical performance.

Origin.

Recycling process.

PCR status.

Certification.

All of those can influence whether recycled feedstock is useful for high-value packaging applications.

That is why the Pizzolato project is more interesting than simply transporting waste to the nearest recycler.

The value lies in establishing a predictable material stream.

But PPWR Creates a Bigger Challenge Than Recycled Content

There is a second regulatory issue that could matter even more.

Pizzolato’s films include pallet covers and stretch film used to stabilize products during transport.

PPWR specifically includes flexible transport formats and pallet wrapping in its transport-packaging reuse provisions.

From 2030, economic operators using specified transport packaging within the EU must generally ensure that at least 40% is reusable within a reuse system.

The regulation contains even stronger provisions for certain movements between sites belonging to the same company or linked businesses, and for delivery to another economic operator within the same Member State, where the relevant transport packaging must be reusable within a reuse system, subject to listed exemptions.

This is important because the Cantina Pizzolato-Aliplast project primarily addresses recycling of used single-use film.

PPWR is also asking companies to consider avoiding single-use transport packaging through reuse.

Those are different circular-economy models.

Recycling model

Use film → collect film → wash and reprocess polymer → make new film.

Reuse model

Use packaging → collect intact packaging → recondition if necessary → use the same packaging again.

The two approaches can coexist.

But under the waste hierarchy, reuse generally sits above material recycling.

That creates a strategic question for flexible-packaging producers:

How much future investment should go into improving recyclable stretch film, and how much should go into systems that reduce the need for single-use stretch film altogether?

Wine Has an Interesting Regulatory Distinction

The wine sector makes this even more nuanced.

PPWR includes reusable-packaging targets for certain beverages sold to consumers.

However, several categories of grapevine products are specifically excluded from those beverage reuse targets.

That does not automatically mean transport packaging used around wine shipments is exempt.

The sales bottle and the pallet wrap are different packaging levels serving different functions.

So a winery may face a regulatory situation where:

its wine sales packaging receives one treatment,

while the stretch film, pallet wrap or other transport packaging surrounding cases of wine is subject to another.

For packaging suppliers, that distinction will matter increasingly.

PPWR compliance cannot be answered simply by asking:

“Is this packaging recyclable?”

Companies will need to identify:

what packaging level it is,

what function it performs,

where it moves,

who uses it,

whether it is single-use or reusable,

and which specific PPWR article applies.

That is a very different procurement environment from the one packaging buyers have been used to.

Local Recycling Has One Practical Advantage: Control

Cantina Pizzolato and Aliplast are both based in the Treviso area.

That geographic proximity is repeatedly emphasized by the partners.

The environmental benefit of shorter transport cannot be quantified from the information supplied because no comparative transport-distance or carbon-footprint study was published.

So it would be inappropriate to attach a specific emissions saving to the local model.

But there is another advantage that does not require speculative carbon accounting.

A shorter supply chain can make material control easier.

The winery knows what film it is using.

The recycler knows where that waste originated.

The material can be collected separately.

Contamination can potentially be managed earlier.

And the recycled polymer has a defined route back into film production.

That is fundamentally different from mixed plastic waste passing through several intermediaries before reaching a recycler.

For high-quality mechanical recycling, material quality at the input stage matters.

A recycler cannot remove every consequence of poor sorting later.

Circularity therefore starts before the waste reaches the recycling line.

It begins with how the packaging user separates it.

21 Tonnes Is Small. That May Be Why the Case Matters

Approximately 21.6 tonnes of film is not a large volume in European plastics terms.

Aliplast itself reported producing around 100,000 tonnes of recycled products in 2024, including recycled PET and LDPE materials.

So the Pizzolato stream represents only a tiny part of the recycler’s wider activity.

That does not make the project irrelevant.

In fact, the opposite may be true.

Circular-packaging systems will not be built only through a handful of enormous polymer streams.

Thousands of manufacturers, food companies, wineries, retailers, warehouses and converters each generate smaller but relatively clean streams of film.

The question is whether those streams can be aggregated, traced and processed economically.

That is the scalability test.

If the model only works when two companies happen to sit near one another, replication may remain limited.

If recyclers can build regional collection networks that aggregate many similar users, the economics become much more interesting.

That is what the industry should watch next.

The Film Contains 30% Recycled Plastic. Aliplast Can Already Go Much Higher.

There is another reason not to interpret the 30% figure as the technical limit.

Aliplast markets other PE film products containing more than 85% recycled material under its Reload range.

That tells us something important.

The 30% specification in the winery project is likely an application decision rather than proof that mechanically recycled PE film cannot exceed 30%.

But the information supplied does not explain why 30% was selected.

Possible factors could include performance requirements, customer specification, material availability, film thickness, processing behaviour or economics.

Without data, choosing one explanation would be speculation.

The correct conclusion is simply:

Aliplast has demonstrated higher recycled-content capability elsewhere, while the Pizzolato film uses a 30/70 recycled-to-virgin formulation.

For converters, this is the real engineering issue behind recycled-content regulation.

Going from 0% to 30% may be technically manageable.

Going from 30% to 35%, 50% or 65% while preserving gauge, stretch, tear resistance and machine performance can be a much harder material-design problem.

The percentage printed in a sustainability report is the easy part.

Making the film run is the difficult part.

Recycling Quality Will Matter More as Demand for PCR Rises

PPWR’s recycled-content requirements are intended to increase demand for secondary plastics.

That creates an opportunity for recyclers.

But it can also expose a supply problem.

Not all recovered PE film produces the same output quality.

Films containing heavy printing, multilayer structures, adhesives, contamination or incompatible polymers can be harder to return to demanding film applications.

Clean industrial and commercial stretch-film streams are therefore strategically valuable.

They offer recyclers a feedstock that may be easier to process into higher-value applications than heavily mixed waste.

The Pizzolato case demonstrates that point on a small scale.

Instead of treating pallet film as anonymous waste, the partners are treating it as a specified raw-material stream.

That is the mindset shift the flexible-packaging industry needs.

But Recycling Cannot Become an Excuse to Preserve Unnecessary Packaging

There is also a risk in the current circular-packaging discussion.

A highly recyclable package can still be unnecessary packaging.

PPWR is deliberately addressing both questions.

Europe wants better recycling and more recycled content.

But it also wants packaging reduction and reuse.

That means a supplier cannot assume:

“Our stretch film is recyclable, therefore the packaging problem is solved.”

Customers may increasingly ask whether the film can be:

downgauged,

used more efficiently,

replaced by a reusable transport system,

or eliminated in certain logistics configurations.

For flexible-packaging producers, this is uncomfortable but important.

The future market may reward better recycled film while simultaneously reducing the total amount of single-use film needed per shipment.

Those trends can happen at the same time.

What This Project Has Proved—and What It Has Not

After one year, the Cantina Pizzolato-Aliplast project has demonstrated several tangible points.

More than 21 tonnes of plastic film entered recycling.

91.7% of the winery’s reported plastic waste was sent for recycling.

The collected film entered an industrial sorting, washing and regeneration process.

Recycled polymer is being used in new film containing 30% recycled plastic.

The project also operates through a relatively localized material chain.

Those are measurable results.

But several questions remain open.

We do not know the precise mass balance showing how much of Pizzolato’s collected film returned specifically into film ultimately used again by Pizzolato.

We do not know the composition of the remaining 8.3% of plastic waste.

We do not have independent mechanical-performance data for the new film.

We do not have a published LCA comparing the system with virgin film.

And the available information does not establish that the 30% formulation satisfies future PPWR recycled-content calculations.

Those gaps should not be filled with marketing language.

They are simply the next data points needed.

The Real Circularity Test Starts Before 2030

The project is therefore both encouraging and incomplete.

That is exactly why it is useful.

It shows the packaging industry moving from a simple waste-management model—

“collect the used plastic”

—to a material-management model—

“collect it cleanly, trace it, regenerate it and put it back into packaging.”

PPWR will push the industry another step further:

“and now prove the recycled content, redesign for recycling, reduce unnecessary packaging and decide where reuse should replace single use.”

Cantina Pizzolato and Aliplast have already started solving part of that equation.

Their next challenge—and the challenge facing thousands of European packaging users—is bigger.

By 2030, success will not be measured only by the percentage of film diverted from disposal.

It will increasingly be measured by how much virgin polymer is genuinely displaced, how reliably the material can circulate again, and whether the packaging should have been single-use in the first place.

That leads to the question flexible-packaging producers should be discussing now:

If your customer already recycles more than 90% of its stretch film, is your next investment a film with more recycled content—or a packaging system that needs less single-use film altogether?

Last Updated on 09/09/2026 by Jota Machinery