Deadline Date: September 17, 2026
The European Commission is inviting grant applications to support the development and demonstration of scalable solutions that enhance recycling, reuse, and circularity of plastic food packaging within the European Union.
The focus areas include improving recyclability of multilayer flexible plastic food packaging, advancing eco-design for recycling, developing mono-material alternatives, and increasing the quality and safety of recycled plastics for food contact applications. It also emphasises digital solutions such as digital product passports, AI-based sorting technologies, and improved recycling and decontamination processes.
The initiative addresses the challenge of recycling multilayer flexible plastic films, which currently lack effective large-scale circular systems for closing the loop back into food contact packaging. It aims to strengthen industrial value chains and support sustainable packaging solutions across producers, suppliers, converters, retailers, waste managers, and recyclers.
The scope includes developing market-ready solutions for mono-material multilayer packaging, improving end-of-life collection, sorting, and recycling systems, and demonstrating industrial-scale technologies that enable safe recycled content in food packaging. It also includes enhancing sorting efficiency using digital tools and physical technologies, and increasing recycled content in new packaging products.
Projects are expected to demonstrate integrated solutions across the value chain while ensuring compliance with relevant EU regulations on food contact materials and packaging waste. They should also evaluate environmental, economic, and social impacts using robust assessment methods such as lifecycle analysis.
The topic supports key EU policies including the European Green Deal, Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, Single Use Plastics Directive, Waste Shipment Regulation, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Zero Pollution Action Plan, and the Circular Economy Act.
Funding for this topic is set at €11,000,000, with individual project contributions ranging from €5,000,000 to €6,000,000.
Eligible applicants include any legal entity, regardless of place of establishment, including entities from non-associated third countries and international organisations, subject to Horizon Europe and call-specific conditions.
For more information, visit European Commission.
