Saving money is essential in many households, which brings shoppers to warehouse stores such as BJ’s, Costco, and Sam’s Club. You have children taking lunch to school, and small packs of crackers, fruit squeezes, or pretzels are convenient. You need snacks to get through a busy workday, and packs of trail mix, potato chips, and protein bars are easy to slip into your computer bag.

As convenient as these snacks are, they come in tear-open snack bags and multi-layered plastics. These bags and wrappers are hard to recycle, which isn’t ideal for the environment. It’s also frustrating for recycling facilities and people trying to do their part.

How Multi-Layer Plastics and Snack Bags Are Made

Before you can understand why it’s hard to recycle multi-layer plastics and snack bags, it helps to know how they’re made. Layers of different plastics and foil are bonded together to form an airtight, waterproof, leakproof package.

The Layers That Make Up Snack Bags

Inner Layer

This food-grade plastic layer is heat-sealed, providing an airtight seal. It’s often made of low-density polyethylene (LDPE or #4 plastic).

Middle Layer

The middle layer is typically a metallized film or aluminum foil that prevents light, moisture, and oxygen from reaching the food inside the bag.

Outer Layer

This is the strongest layer, providing a glossy surface for printing the company’s branding. It’s made of biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) or polyester (PET or #1 plastic).

How the Layers Are Bonded Together

Once the layers are stacked, several methods are used to bond them.

Coextrusion

Machines extrude the different layers simultaneously so they bond as they cool.

Lamination

Adhesives join the layers.

Solvents

Solvents dissolve the surface of the plastic layers and form bonds as the solvents evaporate.

Thermal

Gently heating the plastic melts the layers enough to bond them.

Ultrasonic

Vibrations create friction that heats, melts, and joins the different layers.

The bags then hold items or foods that are sensitive to light, moisture, and air. These foods include chocolate bars, coffee, granola bars, potato chips, and other single-serve snacks.

Why Recycling Facilities Struggle With These Components

The first hurdle is that bonded layers are difficult to separate. Depending on the method used, the plastic layers and foil may also contain adhesives, complicating separation and recycling.

Plastics such as PET and LDPE are recyclable individually. Aluminum is also recyclable at some facilities. However, they’re bonded with heat or chemicals, making separation difficult.

To soften LDPE, you need temperatures of 194 to 212°F. PET’s softening point is much lower, at 158 to 176°F. Aluminum’s softening point is much higher, at 570 to 770°F. If you heat PET or any adhesives too high, they will combust. Because the temperature ranges differ drastically, you must find other ways to separate them that are also affordable for consumers.

Understanding the Impact of Hard-to-Recycle Items on the Environment

When you cannot recycle a plastic bag, you toss it in the trash. An estimated 360 million metric tons of plastic are generated each year. According to United Nations estimates, upwards of 25 million tons of plastic waste end up in streams, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. Even if you put it in a bag to go to the landfill, a windy day might blow it from the truck and into the road, the sewers, or a nearby stream.

If it reaches a landfill, plastic takes time to break down. With sun exposure, it can take up to a decade to start cracking. It can take hundreds of years to decompose, but it never goes away. Those small pieces of plastic become microplastics. Incineration doesn’t prevent microplastics either. Microplastics remain in the ash residue and emissions.

Adding to the problem are people who “wishcycle.” Wishcycling is based on the “wish” that if you put an item in a blue bin for recycling, it will be recycled. That’s not what happens. Items contaminate an entire batch of recyclables, and everything goes to the trash. Or, the items catch on recycling equipment and cause costly repairs.

Until the sorting equipment is fixed, hand sorting and processing may be relied on. Humans aren’t perfect, and errors are likely to occur. Items that could have been recycled are suddenly sent to trash trucks and hauled to landfills. Landfills fill with plastic that slowly breaks down over decades, releasing microplastics into the environment.

Microplastics have become a significant concern. These tiny pieces of plastic enter the air, water, and soil, where people and animals inhale them. We drink them. They accumulate in the fruits and vegetables we grow.

When inhaled or ingested, microplastics enter cells and the bloodstream. Studies show they’re accumulating in organs such as the lungs and brain. They’ve also been found in reproductive organs, affecting fertility. They build up in blood vessels and arteries, where they can join blood clots. They’re believed to trigger inflammation.

What’s the Answer?

Support Brands With Recycling Programs

Support brands that have switched to 100% recyclable packaging or that offer ways to recycle their snack bags. Several manufacturers partner with Terracycle and provide free recycling envelopes to make it easy to mail back bags for recycling. These companies include

• Arm & Hammer/OxiClean (Laundry pod bags)

• Babybel (Cheese wrappers)

• Dunkin’ (Coffee bags)

• Entemann’s (Little Bites)

• Gatorade (Snack bars)

• GoGo Squeez (Fruit and yogurt pouches)

• Halo (Pet food)

• Honest Kids (Drink pouches)

• Huggies (Baby wipes)

• I and Love and You (Pet foods and snacks)

• Kroger (All snack bags)

• Lundberg (Chips and rice packaging)

• MacroBar (Snack bars)

• Royal Canin (Pet food)

• Taco Bell (Sauce packets)

• Takis (Snack bags)

• Tide (Laundry pod bags)

• Wellness (Pet food)

Choose Better Packaging Options

Avoid purchasing individual bagged snacks. Buy in one large bulk bag and transfer individual servings into reusable containers as needed. If you must use a plastic bag, choose bags that are easier to recycle because they’re made of a single form of plastic.

Recycle these sandwich bags in plastic film recycling bins at participating grocery stores or major retailers such as Kohl’s, Target, or Walmart. Items you can recycle in these bins include:

• Appliance wrap

• Bread bags

• Bubble wrap and air pillows

• Case wrap

• Cereal bags

• Dry cleaner bags

• Newspaper and magazine bags

• Plastic packaging and padded mailers

• Plastic grocery bags

• Produce bags

• Zip-sealing storage bags

Stay Informed About Local Recycling Rules

Stay up to date on your local material recovery facility’s recycling policies. Visit the MRF’s website to see if they’re accepting new items. If they have a newsletter, sign up for it.

Recycle Nation also has an extensive directory of MRFs and recycling options across the U.S. Enter the item you want to recycle to see if there’s a nearby option. You’d be surprised how many places accept items people think must go in the trash.