If you take a look at the label of a packaging product, you’ll often find that it’s made out of several different materials. There’s a good reason for this: by combining different base materials, such as paperboard, foil and polymers, manufacturers can create packaging that performs well on several levels, including durability, barrier properties, water resistance, and aesthetics.

However, composite materials come with one major disadvantage. When two different materials are combined, they’re often hard to separate and in consequence to recycle - and in some cases can’t be recycled at all. However, the technical requirements for effective packaging are so demanding that until relatively recently, composite materials were more or less the only way to fulfill them.