Plastics Sustainability & Circular Economy

Design and process decisions that determine recyclability, recycled content, and circular-economy positioning — available as an add-on module or standalone seminar.

Private cohorts & on-site
Format: 2-day (8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.)
Level: Intermediate
Location: Scheduled on demand · on-site at your facility or a regional venue
Date(s): Not yet scheduled for open enrollment. Get notified when it is, or book it privately for your team.
Includes: Certificate of Completion · printed slide binder · take-home reference text

Get notified when this course is scheduled

One email when dates are set. Or skip the wait: run it as a private cohort, on-site at your plant.

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Faculty

Faculty details for this seminar will be announced with the full schedule.

Fees

Early: $1,895 (payment 4+ weeks ahead)
Standard: $2,095 (check/ACH) · $2,165 (card)

Group discount: $200 off per attendee for 3+ from the same organization.

Also Available

  • Corporate on-site delivery at your facility
  • Private cohort sessions
  • Digital curriculum licensing

Seminar Overview

This seminar is grounded in the actual corporate and technical record — not advocacy slide decks. The course corpus pairs two complementary bodies of source material: (1) a 144-document collection of real producer sustainability and annual reporting — TotalEnergies' Universal Registration Document 2025, LyondellBasell, SK Chemicals, Petkim, Aquafil, and Plástica Krítis reports — showing how the world's resin producers actually account for recycled content, mass balance, and emissions; and (2) the full Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability (2019 edition), the operative industry standard for what makes a plastic part recyclable in practice, together with APR resin identification guidance (the ASTM D7611 resin ID code system) and supporting biodegradation, packaging, and APIP organizational reports.

The gap between "we support circularity" and "our part is actually recyclable" is a design-engineering gap, not a marketing one. Parts fail sortation and reprocessing for reasons the APR Design Guide catalogs precisely: wrong resin choice for the stream, non-separable multi-material assemblies, label and adhesive choices that contaminate wash systems, colorants and additives that degrade PCR quality. On the supply side, producers' own annual reports show how PCR content claims are actually constructed — including mass-balance accounting, whose mechanics and limitations every buyer and specifier should understand before signing a recycled-content commitment.

After two days you will be able to apply the APR Design Guide to a real part and identify its recyclability defects, read resin identification codes and their scope correctly, evaluate PCR sourcing and mass-balance claims against the reporting standards producers actually use, distinguish biodegradable and compostable polymer claims that hold from those that don't, and read a producer sustainability report critically enough to separate audited fact from aspiration.

Ideal Learner

  • Plastics part designers and packaging engineers responsible for design-for-recycling decisions
  • Materials and application engineers specifying resins and PCR content
  • Sustainability and ESG managers building circular-economy programs and reporting
  • Purchasing and sourcing staff evaluating PCR suppliers and recycled-content claims
  • Quality and process engineers troubleshooting PCR processing behavior

Learning Objectives

  • Apply the APR Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability (2019) to a real part and identify design defects against stream requirements
  • Use resin identification codes correctly (ASTM D7611) and explain what the codes do and do not signify
  • Evaluate recycled-content and mass-balance claims using the accounting mechanics shown in actual producer reports (TotalEnergies URD 2025, LyondellBasell, SK Chemicals, Petkim, Aquafil)
  • Distinguish biodegradable, compostable, and oxo-degradable claims using the biodegradation test logic
  • Structure a PCR supply chain with the quality and traceability controls that keep processing stable
  • Read producer sustainability/ESG reports critically, separating audited data from forward-looking claims

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.

Seminar Outline

  • Linear vs. circular material flows; the actual leakage points in plastics value chains
  • Mechanical recycling, chemical/advanced recycling, and energy recovery — where each fits and what each costs
  • The regulatory and customer drivers reshaping specifications: recycled-content mandates and brand commitments
  • **Compliance Case Study: a recycled-content commitment that outran the available PCR supply**
  • How the APR Design Guide (2019) is organized: resin-stream guidance, critical-value features, and testing protocols
  • The recyclability defects that fail parts: multi-material structures, non-separable assemblies, size/sortation limits
  • Labels, inks, adhesives, and closures — the contamination sources wash systems actually see
  • Colorants, barrier layers, and additives that degrade PCR quality for downstream users
  • **Exercise 1: APR-guided recyclability review of a real rigid container, feature by feature**
  • The ASTM D7611 resin identification code system (1–7) and the APR resin ID guidance: origin, intent, and common misreading
  • What happens at a MRF: NIR sortation, float-sink, and why the ID code is not the sortation criterion
  • Stream purity requirements and the defect cost of look-alike resins
  • **Exercise 2: sortation simulation — trace five sample parts through a recovery stream**
  • PCR quality grades and their processing consequences: odor, color, MFI drift, and lot variability
  • Mass-balance accounting for chemical recycling output: chain-of-custody models and how producers actually report them
  • The mass-balance mechanics shown in the TotalEnergies URD 2025, LyondellBasell, and SK Chemicals reporting — and their limits
  • Writing a recycled-content specification that a supplier can actually certify
  • **Worked example: constructing a PCR content claim with proper chain-of-custody support**
  • The chemistry of biodegradation: hydrolysis vs. enzymatic pathways; what "biodegradable" means under which conditions
  • Compostability standards logic and certification; home- vs. industrial-compost distinctions
  • PLA, PHA, starch blends, and PBAT: properties, processing, and genuine end-of-life pathways
  • The claims that mislead — and the APR/industry position on degradable additives
  • **Exercise 3: claims audit — test four marketing claims against the biodegradation evidence**
  • How resin producers report sustainability: the document classes in the corpus — annual reports, Universal Registration Documents (TotalEnergies URD 2025), and dedicated sustainability disclosures from LyondellBasell, SK Chemicals, Petkim, Aquafil, and Plástica Krítis
  • Scope 1/2/3 emissions accounting as producers practice it; intensity metrics and their baselines
  • Aquafil's regeneration model as a case in circular nylon; regional producer strategies (Petkim, Plástica Krítis) and the APIP organizational context
  • Separating audited performance data from targets and forward-looking statements
  • **Worked example: extract and verify three specific data points from a producer sustainability report**
  • Building the PCR supply chain: qualification testing, dual-sourcing, and contaminant controls
  • Traceability documentation and the audit trail from bale to certified part
  • Packaging-sector case material from the corpus: what leading brands actually changed in their packaging
  • **Exercise 4 (capstone): full design-for-circularity review of a new package/part — resin choice, APR compliance, PCR strategy, and claim documentation**

More in Track C — Design, Molding & Tooling

Full Course Catalog