Monica currently focuses on the Flexible Packaging side of the business. This journey started three and a half years ago when Taghleef joined CEFLEX Consortium. The new role allows her to really investigate and support Taghleef group in offering and positioning a compelling portfolio that can better meet the expectations of the market especially in terms of Sustainability and Recyclability. It’s quite a complex and fragment situation so it requires some decoding in the process. 

What are the biggest challenges facing the market today and how can this be overcome? 

The challenge lies [as I mentioned earlier] in the fragmentation and the differences in the rules which complicates the scenario quite a lot. You would expect this is normal on a global scale, but fragmentations happen within a region too. It’s about the presence of EPR, having the right collection, sorting, and recycling systems and infrastructures in place. On top of this, guidelines to define what is acceptable or recyclable are still under discussion in many organizations. This is again, linked to the diversity in collection, sorting and recycling. It’s a hurdle that many stakeholders must deal with when they are designing their packaging. 

In your opinion, what do you consider to be the greatest development in your industry in the last decade? 

Instead of naming one single development that took place in our industry, I would say that the increase in awareness when it comes to the importance of creating a Circular Economy is what definitely marked a change of pace for all of us. Never have we seen so many collaborative efforts as much as you see now, and this is all because of the industry coming together and cooperating to creating a circularity for precious resources. It is also the growing consciousness that we can no longer rely on a linear model and that young generations as well as the generations to come are calling us for action.

How do you see the sector developing in the next five to ten years?

We should expect a boost in the usage of recycled plastics along with the efforts to redesign the packaging, with its end-of-life and impact in the environment at its core.  

You will be speaking at AMI’s plastics industry expos in Cleveland in November, could you give us a preview on what you will be talking about?

As I should be part of a panel discussion, I suppose the specific topic will be introduced sometime closer to the event dates.