Soft Plastic and Film Recycling: Why Pyrolysis Handles What Sorting Can't
Soft Plastic Recycling
Soft plastics — films, bags and flexible packaging — are among the most abundant and least recycled plastics. Thin, lightweight and often multi-layer or contaminated, they clog sorting machinery and carry little mechanical-recycling value, which is why so much of it ends up landfilled.
Pyrolysis changes that arithmetic. Because the process does not care whether the plastic is a rigid bottle or a thin film — it only cares that it is polymer — soft plastic converts to fuel oil, gas and char just as readily as any other feedstock.
The Feedstock Mechanical Recycling Leaves
The point is complementary, not competitive. Mechanical recycling captures the clean, rigid, high-value fraction; pyrolysis captures the soft, mixed and multi-layer fraction that mechanical sorting rejects. Together they cover a far larger share of the plastic stream than either could alone.
That division is why pyrolysis matters for soft plastic specifically: it is the route that exists for the material no sorter wants, and it turns that unwanted film into a fuel and carbon product rather than waste.
Closing the Film Gap
As flexible packaging keeps growing while recycling rates lag behind, the feedstock supply for soft-plastic pyrolysis is only increasing. The operators who build capacity for it are positioned against a problem that is still compounding.
Learn More About Soft Plastic Pyrolysis
Partner With The KleanTeam to Recover the Film Fraction
Safe. Clean. Profitable. One Proven Partner.
Klean Industries processes the soft plastics and films that mechanical recycling rejects, turning the flexible-packaging waste stream into pyrolysis oil and recovered carbon black.
Klean’s Key Advantages:
- ✅ Thirty-plus years engineering commercial tire and plastic pyrolysis plants.
- ✅ 3 recovered carbon black (rCB) plants built in India over the past 2 years.
- ✅ KBR added Klean’s proprietary TyreNova tire-pyrolysis technology to its IP portfolio.
- ✅ KleanLoop blockchain provides end-to-end feedstock traceability.
Ready to recover your soft plastic and film waste?
Speak with a Plastic Pyrolysis Expert at Klean Industries » GO.
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