Recycling and Functionalization of Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) Plastics in the Packaging Industry

With the deepening of the concept of sustainable development, recycled plastics play an increasingly important role in environmental protection and resource utilization. However, in the past, the recycling of recycled materials has faced many challenges in practical applications, which has made it difficult to increase the utilization rate of recycled plastics. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the challenges in the application of recycled materials for packaging suitability. In order to solve the above problems, this study analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of intelligent sorting technology, compares the differences between physical and chemical sorting, and explores the performance defects and modification methods of PCR plastics by comparing different literatures, summarizing case studies and experimental data. It is found that PCR plastic needs technological innovation to break through the bottleneck of sorting and modification, and low-cost and high-precision sorting technology, high-performance modifier and high-efficiency catalysts should be researched and developed in the future, so as to promote its shift from "low-quality recycling" to "high-quality closed-loop", and to provide support for the scale application of sustainable packaging and recycled materials to provide support for sustainable packaging and large-scale application of recycled materials.