L’Oréal joins Nextloopp

Nextloopp, a U.K.-based initiative that seeks to create circular food-grade recycled polypropylene (PP) from postconsumer packaging, has welcomed L’Oréal to its 47-company-strong project.

Nextek Ltd., London, launched NextLoopp in October 2020 to create food-grade PPristine and “INRT” recycled polypropylene (rPP) from postconsumer packaging. INRT is a high-quality polymer that has been developed specifically for packaging that requires no odor and has no migration challenges, Nextloopp says.

The project recently completed tracer-based sorting trials and began production trials of food-grade compliant rPP, making more than 60 different products from Nextloopp's four grades of PPristine food-compliant and INRT rPP grade resins.

Using a combination of technologies developed by Nextek Ltd. to first separate food-grade PP and then decontaminate the polymer to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the U.K., EU and the USA, Nextloopp says it can identify and sort any number of pack variants from shower gel bottles to yogurt pots in any plastic type. 

Delphine Trillat, materials science domain leader at Paris-based L’Oréal, says, “We have been working for many years to develop packaging made from high-quality postconsumer recycled polymers. Today, we are pleased to join the Nextloopp project team in order to join efforts and boost the circular pathway for food-grade rPP packaging, with such a promising technology for the years to come.”

Professor Edward Kosior, founder and CEO of Nextek and Nextloopp, adds, “With L’Oréal joining our dynamic project, we believe we have an excellent balance of expertise to drive our groundbreaking project forward. Thanks to L’Oréal’s long-term commitment to sustainable packaging, it is the ideal participant to trial our high purity recycled polypropylene resins. We look forward to closing the PP loop with them.”