circularity success stories:
Across the 4evergreen alliance, members are putting our tools into practice and delivering measurable results. Their projects show how collaboration, innovation and shared expertise can accelerate change.
Each year, we invite members to submit their most impactful initiatives. These stories highlight how our guidelines and protocols are being used to improve recyclability, enhance collection and sorting, and enable better recycling outcomes
2025 Circularity Success Stories – coming soon!
Register to our Annual Conference and meet the winners!
2024 Circularity Success Stories
In 2024, members were invited to submit projects under three categories:
1. Products Designed for Circularity
2. Effective Collection and Sorting
3. Enabling Enhanced Recycling Processes
Each submission was assessed based on several criteria: whether the project is already live or available, the level of collaboration involved, its innovative character, the use of 4evergreen tools, and its contribution to the alliance’s targets.
A total of 11 projects qualified, and five were selected to present their work at 4evergreen’s 2024 annual conference, New Horizons for Fibre-Based Packaging Circularity.
Discover the three selected Circularity Success Stories - one from each category
Mondi Group’s Protective Mailer
The Protective Mailers are made from Mondi’s strong but lightweight kraft paper and open-flute material, offering a unique combination.
The flexible design offers the possibility of customising the open fluting to the needs of the product, ensuring resilience and product protection to prevent goods from shifting inside the mailer and safeguard products in transit. The good printability of Mondi’s kraft paper enables customers to add effective branding and distinctive designs to each mailer.
The Protective Mailers are available in standard and customisable sizes – their height can be adjusted to best suit the size of their contents, thereby reducing average parcel dimensions, optimising material usage and facilitating lower shipping costs.
AD Circular
AD Circular is a new Avery Dennison program for recycling used paper and filmic label liners in countries across Europe.
AD Circular’s web-based app makes scheduling pick up of used liners easy. It also provides useful data in the form of regularly updated analytics and certificates on the amount of liner material you’ve sent to be recycled, the amount of CO2 emissions you’ve avoided as a result, and more.
With AD Circular, you can help stem the tide of label waste and increase the supply of recycled label material. AD Circular also strengthens your own sustainability story and helps you achieve your goals for recycling, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and more.
Paper Pack Online Community
The Paperpack Community is a unique community created for paper packaging professionals. It’s all about pooling science-based knowledge, challenging preconceptions, asking questions and discovering new answers.
Through networking, events and webinars, our community members seek to accelerate partnerships and collaborations – and so bring much needed innovations and new packaging solutions more quickly to market.
The project was presented by Sappi.
2023 Circularity Success Stories
In 2023, 4evergreen invited its members to share projects that demonstrated real progress in circularity. Submissions were welcomed across five categories:
1. Addressing Recyclability Challenges
2. Design for Circularity
3. Improving Collection and Sorting
4. Circularity Best Practices
5. Landmark Investments Enabling 4evergreen Key Targets
Each project was evaluated based on whether it was already live or available, the level of collaboration involved, its innovative approach, the use of 4evergreen tools, and its contribution to the alliance’s targets.
A total of 22 projects qualified, and five were selected to present their work at 4evergreen’s 2023 annual conference, The Pathway to Circularity: From Guidance to Action.
Discover the five selected Circularity Success Stories - one from each category.
Developing re-pulpable and bio-digestible barrier coatings for functional fibre-based packaging
Aquapak’s Hydropol* is a water-soluble, biodegradable polymer technology based on polyvinyl alcohol addressing a major challenge: functionalising paper for sensitive food applications while ensuring its recyclability in standard paper mills.
Hydropol can be applied to paper for food packaging using standard polymer extrusion equipment, and provides excellent gas, oil, and grease resistance. It is safe for food contact, heat-sealable, and ideal for form-fill-seal paper packaging.
In addition, Hydropol is highly environmentally friendly. When Hydropol-coated paper is recycled, the polymer completely dissolves during repulping, allowing for full fibre recovery without generating plastic waste and is biodegraded within mill effluent systems.
SIG Terra alu-free full barrier
Aquapak’s Hydropol* is a water-soluble, biodegradable polymer technology based on polyvinyl alcohol addressing a major challenge: functionalising paper for sensitive food applications while ensuring its recyclability in standard paper mills.
Hydropol can be applied to paper for food packaging using standard polymer extrusion equipment, and provides excellent gas, oil, and grease resistance. It is safe for food contact, heat-sealable, and ideal for form-fill-seal paper packaging.
In addition, Hydropol is highly environmentally friendly. When Hydropol-coated paper is recycled, the polymer completely dissolves during repulping, allowing for full fibre recovery without generating plastic waste and is biodegraded within mill effluent systems.
The Cup Collective
The Cup Collective is a unique European partnership programme to recycle and regenerate paper cups on an industrial scale through the launch of initiatives such as those now operational in Brussels and Dublin and in partnership with initiatives like ‘McDonald’s in-house cup collection’ across multiple European markets, and ‘It’s Your Part’ in Germany.
In addition to activations the project acts as a communication hub, sharing system designs, expertise, and best practices. By making it easy for consumers to do the right thing, we will ensure that no cup is left behind.
The ultimate goal? Accelerate industrial scale solutions for paper cup recycling across Europe. Seeing half a billion cups recycled into new paper and board products over the next two years, while developing a commercially viable and transparent model to maximise the value of recycled cup materials.
Palurec PolyAl Recycling Plant
Palurec GmbH has been recognised for pioneering a certified advancement in recycling in Germany. While beverage cartons are primarily fibre-based, they also contain polymers and aluminium which are barriers for food protection. In the past, after extracting the fibres, the remaining mix of polymers and aluminum was commonly used as a low-emission fuel for cement factories.
Palurec’s new process converts this mixture into high-quality recyclate suitable as an admixture for injection moulding applications such as castings, canisters, pipes or boxes. This directly reduces the use of virgin materials.
Palurec has been praised for its tangible impact on the circular economy, its alignment with 4evergreen’s primary targets, the use of 4evergreen tools, and the initiative’s uniqueness. The project’s collaborative approach and the ready availability of the solution have also drawn praise.
