Yes, polystyrene packaging will be recycled by 2025. But before it can be recycled, it has to be sorted properly…

Will polystyrene packaging be recycled in 2025? This is the question being asked by Citeo, which is publishing a post on its website devoted to this issue, which concerns almost 100,000 tonnes of packaging put on the market each year in France, including 60,000 tonnes of yoghurt pots alone. To answer this question, Citeo has decided to ‘ sift through the most common assertions, based on verified facts ’.

Let’s get straight to the point: ‘ Yes, household packaging made of polystyrene (PS) – which includes yoghurt pots – will be recycled by 2025 ’, says Citeo, which goes on to give a few more details. ‘ In fact, all the PS packaging collected in sorting bins and sorted at sorting centres has been recycled at the Eslava plant in Valencia, Spain, for several years now. What’s going to change in 2025 is that this packaging will now be able to join a new closed-loop recycling chain, in other words, it will be able to become food packaging once again ’, says Citeo, adding that “ for packaging to be collected and recycled, it must be thrown into the sorting bin ”.

Citeo also mentions the case of meat and fish trays. Will they also be recycled? On this point, the answer is more nuanced: ‘ For certain types of PS packaging, such as expanded PS meat or fish trays, it is more difficult to find the right orientation at the sorting centre, and to date, recyclers accept them in limited quantities ’. However, Citeo is not giving up hope that it will soon be able to give a more positive answer to this question: ‘ We’re not giving up: Citeo is working with the manufacturers and marketers concerned on eco-design (changing the design of packaging or changing the materials used) in order to improve the capture and recycling of packaging’.

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