Alara Sipahioglu

Recycling a non-recycled packaging

Crispy is a collection of serving bowls, 100% made from delaminated post-consumer crisp packaging from structure down to the paint. A non-recyclable packaging is upcycled into a new product that once again contains crisps.

Crisps are an integral part of British culture, with the UK being the third-highest consumer of salty snacks worldwide, consuming 6 billion packets of crisps annually. However, due to the high salt and oil content, the packaging requires a high-tech multilayered polymer structure that is difficult to process and as a result, is not widely recycled. Instead, the current fate of this type of packaging is incineration, landfill, or littering the environment. Crispy addresses these challenges and demonstrates that even complex plastic packaging, like crisp packets, can and should be recycled.

The project focuses on enabling circular recyclability opportunities by recovering and recycling each material used in the packaging separately. Using a specialised separation process, a single crisp pack can be delaminated into four different materials: two PP films, a metallised PET film, and ink. All the materials besides the metallised PET are recyclable. Therefore, the casing made from the metallic threads can be disassembled from the bowls and kept or disposed of separately.

Specifically targeting crisp packets, a culturally charged and high impact product, Crispy unconventionally upcycles a non-recycled packaging into a new product, showcasing the potential for achieving circularity even with challenging plastic forms and promoting a shift in perception of the humble crisp, a big culprit of both street waste and unreclaimed materials.