by Yvonne T. Chua and Avigail M. Olarte
THEY MAY be small and convenient for consumers, but those sachets and pouches that are the current toast of the manufacturing world has become a considerable environmental headache.
Like a lot of plastics, these packaging materials, known as flexibles, laminates, or composite materials consisting of several layers of either the same or different materials (plastic, ink, metal), are recyclable. But making them reusable is more complicated than recycling paper, cartons, metals, glass, and rigid plastics.