Almost every packaging supplier will tell you their product contains recycled material. Far fewer will put a number on it in writing. That gap matters increasingly, because customers and auditors ask for the number and not the assurance.
The two claims, which are different
Post-industrial recycled content comes from manufacturing waste – offcuts, regrind, rejected parts. It is clean, traceable and easy to evidence. It is also, in most people’s eyes, the less impressive of the two.
Post-consumer content comes from material that has been used and collected. It is harder to source, harder to verify, and it is what most customers asking about recycled content actually mean.
Ask which one. “Contains recycled material” frequently means post-industrial, and if your customer meant post-consumer, you have a problem that surfaces at the worst moment.
What you can ask a supplier for
A percentage, stated as a range rather than a precise figure, and stated as post-industrial or post-consumer. A serious supplier can give this from their resin purchasing. One who cannot is either not measuring it or is buying whatever is cheapest that week – and both mean the number will move between orders.
Also worth asking: does the percentage apply to the whole product or to part of it? A sheet with a recycled core and virgin faces is a different claim from a fully recycled sheet.
What you should not claim
Anything you cannot evidence. It sounds obvious and it is routinely ignored, because recycled content claims are the kind of thing that gets added to a specification by someone who has not asked the supplier.
The safe formulation is the one your supplier will put on a document. If they will say “contains recycled polypropylene”, say that. If they will say “thirty per cent post-industrial”, say that instead. Do not round up.
The trade-off nobody mentions
Recycled content generally means slightly lower impact strength and slightly more variability between batches. For a layer pad or a floor protector that is irrelevant. For something that gets dropped, it may not be.
So the honest answer to “should I specify recycled content” is: yes where the application allows it, and check first where it does not. We went into where the cheap specification costs more in is the cheapest corrugated sheet actually cheaper.
What to ask for, in one list
Four things, and ask for all four at quote stage rather than when someone downstream asks you:
The percentage, as a range. Whether it is post-industrial or post-consumer. Whether it applies to the whole product or part of it. And whether the supplier will put those three on their own documentation.
A supplier who answers all four is measuring. One who answers one is not, and the number will move between orders whether or not anyone tells you.
Keep the answer with the purchase record. Retrospective documentation is much harder to obtain than contemporaneous documentation, and it is the kind of thing that gets asked for years later.
What we can do
We supply PP corrugated sheet and will state the recycled content and its type on the quote. Tell us what you need to be able to claim downstream, and we will tell you exactly what we can put in writing – including being clear about what we cannot.