The growing use of recycled plastic in food packaging raises chemical safety concerns, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has said.
In a new report, the FAO said the materials offer “clear environmental benefits” but cautioned their use “underscore the need for discussion on globally harmonized standards”.
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Recycled plastic packaging is becoming an increasingly important part of to circular economy strategies and efforts to reduce packaging waste at food manufacturers and their packaging suppliers.
The FAO report focuses on food contact materials (FCMs), a category that includes packaging, containers and processing equipment that come into direct contact with food.
While recycled plastics are widely promoted as a way to cut reliance on virgin polymers, the FAO stressed recycling processes can introduce or concentrate unknown substances that may migrate into food.
“Recycled plastics can pose risks to human health due to contamination with substances from a previous use and/or from other waste,” the FAO said, highlighting the need for more consistent evaluation across countries.
Risk assessment gaps
A central concern highlighted by the FAO was the uneven nature of global regulation and testing requirements for recycled plastic packaging.
While jurisdictions such as the EU have established frameworks for authorising recycling processes, what the report called “non-intentionally added substances” (NIAS) remain difficult to identify and assess.
These substances can include breakdown products, impurities and chemicals formed during recycling. According to FAO-aligned scientific assessments, they “must be risk assessed according to internationally accepted standards”, yet the availability of harmonised methods remains limited.
Industry observers have long pointed to a fragmentation of regulations. A recent FAO-co-authored review found “a lack of harmonisation among regulatory requirements globally”, particularly for newer packaging formats and recycled content streams.
Chemical safety concerns
Chemical migration is a key issue for recycled food packaging, the FAO report said. During recycling, plastics may carry contaminants from earlier applications, as well as substances introduced during collection, sorting or reprocessing.
These compounds can include additives, degradation products and unintended chemicals formed during mechanical or chemical recycling. The report warned some of these substances are not always fully characterised before recycled materials are reintroduced into food supply chains.
Experts involved in FAO-related research have previously noted that emerging packaging materials can introduce “possible food safety hazards that need to be addressed through a risk-based approach”.
Industry regulations generally require that food contact materials do not transfer substances into food at levels harmful to human health.
However, research has said the complexity of recycled inputs makes full verification challenging, particularly when feedstock origins are diverse or poorly documented.
“We want to recycle more plastic, but we also want to make sure that by solving one problem we don’t create new problems. Food safety must be a central consideration in the transition towards more sustainable agrifood systems and food consumption patterns,” Corinna Hawkes, director of the agrifood systems and food safety division at the FAO, said.
The report’s findings come at a time when packaging producers, food manufacturers and retailers are looking to expand their usage of recycled plastic to meet sustainability targets and regulatory pressure to cut virgin plastic.
Recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) and other recycled polymers are increasingly used in beverage bottles, trays and flexible packaging formats.
However, the FAO warns scaling up circular packaging systems without robust safety evaluation could undermine consumer confidence and regulatory consistency.
The organisation calls for stronger, more harmonised risk assessment approaches covering the full lifecycle of recycled plastics, from collection to final food contact use.
This includes improved analytical methods to detect unknown substances and better alignment between international regulatory systems.
As circular packaging adoption accelerates globally, the FAO suggested food safety frameworks will need to evolve alongside recycling technologies, ensuring that sustainability gains do not come at the expense of chemical safety assurance in food packaging systems
