According to The Recycling Partnership, 8 in 10 Americans report recycling is worth the effort. However, over half of household recyclables end up in trash bins instead of recycling containers that create economic and environmental costs.

A recent 2023 report by the Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF)—an industry consortium of food and beverage companies, non-profit organizations, industry suppliers and more—found that residential sorting processes can integrate flexible plastic packaging (FPP) into a single-stream, mechanical recycling facility. Besides the functional demonstration of integrating FPPs, the pilot provided capital toward investigating end markets for an FPP end product, called the rFlex bale—which can be used as a material component in bale form or made into a feedstock.