The problem with black packaging

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Introduction
Carbon black pigments, widely used to produce black packaging, pose a major recycling challenge because they absorb near-infrared (NIR) light, making them invisible to sorting systems. This report examines the environmental and economic issues caused by carbon black, explores emerging non-carbon black alternatives, and highlights examples of their use across packaging and other industries.

Key Takeaways

• Carbon black prevents NIR sorting systems from detecting black plastics, leading to increased landfill, reduced recycling efficiency, and contamination of other recycling streams.
• Regulatory gaps around pigment use mean carbon black remains common despite its impact on recycling rates and supply chain efficiency.
• Non-carbon black pigments, such as Caps & Closures’ Black-CF and Ampacet’s REC-NIR-BLACK, are NIR-detectable and can match the appearance of traditional carbon black while allowing recyclability.
• Berry Global and Diplom-Is have adopted non-carbon black for ice cream containers, successfully tested at multiple recycling facilities to enable local sorting and reduce virgin plastic use.
• Greif developed an NIR-detectable closure for jerrycans, driven in part by Scandinavian legislation banning carbon black pigments in certain packaging.
• Origin’s wood-based carbon black alternative offers a carbon-negative footprint and cost stability, while TOMRA’s circular ecosystem reuses black plastics from decommissioned vending machines in new products.
• Applications extend beyond food and beverage packaging to automotive, electronics, and industrial sectors where black plastics are prevalent.

Conclusion
Non-carbon black pigments are emerging as a practical solution to a long-standing recycling problem, with early adoption in food, industrial, and consumer goods packaging. Wider uptake will depend on cost competitiveness, industry standards, and regulatory drivers. Alternative pigments such as wood-based carbon black and closed-loop recovery systems like TOMRA’s could further accelerate the shift toward recyclable black plastics, making it possible to maintain design preferences without sacrificing circularity.

It’s no secret that black packaging can negatively affect the recycling process, but are new, non-carbon solutions about to change this? In this edition of the Brief, we explore the different applications for carbon black and non-carbon black in the industry, and how non-carbon black options are being implemented.

What is carbon black?

Defined by induPlast Packaging Group as a “form of soot with a high surface/volume ratio, mainly used as a pigment for black packaging production”, it can cause environmental problems, as sorting plants are equipped with infrared sensors (NIR) which are able to detect and sort plastic materials – but are not able to detect packaging containing carbon black pigments, which the Group says will be rejected for incineration or landfill. A new black pigment, Carbon BlackFree, has been introduced by the Group to replace carbon black, as it can be detected by NIR.

What are the issues with carbon black?

In June this year, Australian company Caps & Closures published an article on the rise of non-carbon black solutions in plastic packaging. It explained that as NOR technology relies on the way each type of plastic reflects NIR light to identify and sort materials, carbon black causes issues here as it absorbs almost all the infrared light, preventing NIR systems from detecting and correctly identifying the polymer characteristics of black plastic items.

The company says that when valuable black plastics bypass recycling processes, they result in increased landfill waste and decreased recycling efficiency, leading to environmental degradation and economic losses from the non-recovery of recyclable materials. It also says that the contamination of other recyclable streams by misidentified black plastics further degrades the quality of recycled products, undermining their market competitiveness and disrupting the recycling economy. The article states:

“As countries export and import recycled plastics, inefficiencies in recycling black plastics can disrupt international supply chains and hinder the achievement of global sustainability goals.”

It adds that the problem is compounded by the lack of stringent regulations regarding using specific pigments in plastics designated for recycling.

When it comes to innovations in non-carbon black solutions, Caps & Closures has created its own solution, ‘Black-CF’, designed to be fully detectable by NIR sorting systems due to a pigment that reflects NIR light, and claiming to be the same colour as traditional carbon black.

Referring to non-carbon black solutions in general, the company highlights the introduction of new pigments that are detectable by NIR technology, allowing recycling facilities to sort and recycle black plastics accurately. It also points out increasing interest in pigments derived from natural sources, which may offer environmental advantages over conventional synthetic options.

How is non-carbon black being implemented?

In 2019, Ampacet introduced a carbon-free masterbatch range, REC-NIR-BLACK, as part of its sustainable development program. The black masterbatch solutions were said to be NIR transparent to allow sorting with near-infrared optical sensors and recycling, seeking to enable the reuse, repair and recycling of black packaging waste and allow recyclers to support the circular economy.

In November this year, Berry Global announced that its non-carbon black ice cream pack, produced for Norwegian ice cream manufacturer Diplom-Is’s Royal brand, had won the International Ice Cream Consortium (IICC) award for best packaging solution. Aiming to improve efficiency, recyclability and reduce waste during production, Diplom-Is claimed it had pioneered the use of the non-carbon black, making the plastic containers for Royal ice cream easier to recycle for the first time.

Back in 2022, Berry Superfos provided non-carbon black containers to Diplom-IS for packaging its Royal ice cream brand, apparently ensuring their recyclability. At the time, Anne-Lene Molland, communications manager at Diplom-Is, said: “The new black enables proper sorting of Royal ice cream containers at local recycling and sorting facilities, which can save significant amounts of virgin plastic material. We have been very thorough in our approach by successfully testing the non-carbon black containers at two local recycling plants in Norway, as well as at a sorting plant in Germany.”

Beyond food packaging, non-carbon black is being used in multiple applications by Greif, which launched an NIR-detectable black plastic screw cap in 2022. The company developed the cap for its jerrycans, reportedly using an alternative black colour that does not contain carbon, allowing it to be detected by NIR.

Designed for use with Greif’s jerrycans across applications including beverages, food, chemicals and agrochemicals, the closure was first launched in Scandinavia, where changes in legislation state that packaging and closures must not be dyed with carbon black.

As an alternative to both fossil-based carbon black and non-carbon black, Origin has created a carbon black filler and pigment made from Origin HTC (hydrothermal carbon), a raw material derived from wood residues, which also claims to have a carbon-negative footprint. Reportedly, the material has no detectable levels of PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), is cost-competitive with fossil-based carbon black and is expected to “provide stable pricing largely de-coupled from the petroleum supply chain”.

More recently, TOMRA announced a collaborative recycling ecosystem for black plastics this summer. Part of the company’s material circularity initiative, Retility, the initiative was established to recycle materials from retired TOMRA reverse vending machines while providing access to quality recycled content for use in the production of new TOMRA technologies.

The company says that applications of black polymers are mostly found in computer and mobile technology, where reportedly up to 60% of the associated plastics are black, and the automotive industry, where around 90% of plastics are coloured black.

Designed to be a scalable, open-access ecosystem in collaboration with European Recycling Platform in Norway and industrial plastics compounder Polykemi, TOMRA’s Reverse Vending Machines (RVMs) are ‘responsibly decommissioned’ at end of life. During disassembly, a range of black plastic parts are pre-sorted by polymer type before being passed to Polykemi to be recycled in a “quality-assured material stream”.

The ‘fully-documented’ recycled content is then sent to TOMRA’s existing injection moulding partners to become new polymer parts, said to enable TOMRA to achieve full circularity across a range of polymer components found in its products and provide an opportunity for other black plastic-based hardware producers to achieve the same.

It will be interesting to see how non-carbon black continues to be applied within the industry and whether its use could become more widespread over time, as TOMRA suggests. It will also be worth keeping an eye out for alternative solutions such as Origin’s wood-based pigment and any legislative changes such as the ones in Scandinavia, preventing the use of carbon black.

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