Following the launch of the ground-breaking open standard for plastic packaging data, Open 3P, in September 2022, the consortium behind the project has secured additional funding from Innovate UK for Phase 2 work to expand the standard and develop a data-sharing platform.
The Open 3P standard provides a common framework to help all the stakeholders involved in manufacturing, selling and recycling plastic packaging to share data with regulators and government agencies, as well as with each other. With the ultimate aim of lowering the environmental footprint of plastic packaging, its development was a highly collaborative effort between project partners Dsposal, OPRL, Open Data Manchester, RECOUP and Ecosurety.
The next phase of the project will see the Open 3P standard being expanded to cover all packaging materials – including glass, metals, paper and wood – as well as the development of a user-friendly, real-time data-sharing platform for the packaging value chain.
The platform will revolutionise the way most packaging data is collected and shared by going to the source, speeding up the process and improving accuracy. Material and packaging manufacturers will be able to upload and share data about their packaging materials, format and components so that retailers, brands and other stakeholders in the value chain can easily analyse, manage and report on their packaging data. Taken together, Open 3P and the data-sharing platform will go beyond the new Extended Producer Responsibility requirements and will help organisations to understand the makeup of the packaging in their supply chain as well as see wider industry trends and patterns.
The development of the platform will be extensively informed by user feedback over the coming months to ensure it meets industry needs and will also enable data to be shared with recyclers and reprocessors to help improve identification and sorting of packaging waste and increase recycling rates.