Recycled Packaging for Pharma?

Sustainable pharmaceutical packaging is gaining momentum as companies seek to reduce environmental impact without compromising product quality or patient safety. Therefore, the USP recently published a stimuli article on sustainable packaging for the packaging of low-risk pharmaceutical dosage forms.

Which dosage forms could be candidates for PCR plastic systems?

According to the stimuli article, post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging systems are especially promising for solid oral dosage forms. The following dosage forms—classified as highly stable, with a low potential for packaging interaction, no sterility requirement, and minimal interactions with packaging materials—could be ideal candidates for PCR plastic systems: 

• Tablets 
• Capsules
• Powders
• Lozenges and Pastilles
• Granules and Pellets
• Suppositories
• Topical Patches

Lack of globally harmonized regulations

A central obstacle is the lack of globally harmonized regulations for recycled packaging materials. Unlike active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and excipients, packaging materials—especially recycled ones—lack unified international GMP guidance on composition, testing, certification, and traceability. The article therefore reviews how recycled food-contact material frameworks in the US, EU, Canada, and parts of Asia shape current barriers and opportunities for PCR adoption in pharma. It emphasizes extractables and leachables (E&L) testing to evaluate contamination risk, especially given unknown input streams, potential carryover of degraded additives/ink residues/oligomers, and batch variability in mechanical recycling.

The text also highlights technological advances—especially chemical recycling—as potential pathways to achieve pharmaceutical-grade purity and GMP-compliance. In cases involving chemically recycled plastics, many of the traditional unknowns are removed because the process returns polymers to monomers. Thus, with regulatory harmonization and robust process validation, PCR plastics could be implemented responsibly to cut environmental burden while protecting public health.

More information is provided in the stimuli article Towards Sustainable Packaging—the Use of Postconsumer Recycled Plastics in the Packaging of Low-Risk Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms published in Pharmacopeial Forum (PF) 52(4).