Recycled PLA is a bio-based plastic. Manufacturers use it widely in food packaging like trays and clamshells. However, recycled PLA faces a specific technical hurdle: contamination. Once someone uses and collects PLA for recycling, it can carry residues from food, inks, adhesives, and other polymers. Food-contact regulations set a high bar for what recycled material can safely touch food again. EU Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 is the framework regulation covering this. As a result, recyclers often route contaminated PLA to lower-value, non-food applications, even when the underlying polymer quality would otherwise support reuse.
This is not a minor bottleneck. It’s one of the main reasons recycled content in food packaging stays low across the industry, despite growing EU targets for it.
What are the existing solutions, and where do they fall short?
Conventional decontamination relies mainly on two approaches: washing and thermal desorption. Washing removes surface residues using water or detergents, but it struggles with contaminants that have migrated into the polymer itself rather than sitting on the surface. Thermal desorption, meanwhile, uses heat and vacuum to drive off volatile compounds, but the high temperatures involved risk degrading the polymer’s mechanical properties, particularly for a bio-based plastic like PLA, which is more heat-sensitive than conventional fossil-based plastics.
In other words, existing methods force a trade-off: clean the plastic thoroughly and risk damaging it, or protect the polymer and leave contaminants behind. This is the gap supercritical CO2 decontamination is being explored to close.
What is supercritical CO2 decontamination?
Supercritical CO2 is carbon dioxide held at a temperature and pressure above its critical point. In this state, it behaves partway between a gas and a liquid: it penetrates a polymer matrix like a gas, while dissolving contaminants like a liquid solvent. Once the pressure is released, it leaves no toxic residue behind, unlike solvent-based chemical treatments. This combination makes it a candidate for cleaning recycled plastics thoroughly without the thermal degradation risk that comes with conventional methods.
A peer-reviewed study comparing supercritical CO2 decontamination across PP, PET and PLA found the technique effective at extracting contaminants from beverage packaging materials, including PLA specifically, without compromising the base polymer. That independent research supports why this approach is worth testing at industrial scale, beyond MoeBIOS’s own results.
From lab to pilot scale: what IPC presented at KOS2026
If further validation confirms these results, this approach could open a new route for recycled PLA back into food-contact packaging, an application that currently accepts very little recycled content because of contamination risk. Consequently, converters and brand owners working under the EU’s growing recycled-content targets would benefit from that shift. Likewise, waste managers could route more collected PLA toward higher-value outcomes instead of downcycling.
That said, it’s worth being precise about where things stand. Pilot-scale testing indicates the process’s potential; it does not yet constitute full industrial validation. Fittingly, the audience’s own questions at KOS2026 reflected this same caution, asking about the technology’s maturity and whether the same approach could extend beyond packaging to applications like medical devices or cosmetics.
What this could mean for the packaging value chain
If further validation confirms these results, this approach could open a new route for recycled PLA back into food-contact packaging. Currently, this application accepts very little recycled content because of contamination risk. Converters and brand owners working under the EU’s growing recycled-content targets would benefit from that shift. So would waste managers who want to route more collected PLA toward higher-value outcomes instead of downcycling.
It’s worth being precise about where things stand. Pilot-scale testing indicates the process’s potential. It does not yet constitute full industrial validation. The audience’s own questions at KOS2026 reflected this. Attendees asked about the technology’s maturity. They also asked whether the same approach could extend beyond packaging to applications like medical devices or cosmetics.
What’s next
The MoeBIOS team will continue validating this decontamination approach, and further results are expected as testing progresses. In the meantime, our earlier explainer on what “bio-based,” “biodegradable” and “compostable” actually mean is a useful next read if the terminology here felt unfamiliar. Additionally, our upcoming October event will open this same packaging-circularity conversation to a wider stakeholder discussion.