New Canadian standard on products with recycled plastic content

The Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) administrative unit has published a new “CAN/BNQ 3840-100 Recycled Plastic Content Products” standard that aims to guarantee recycled plastic content in new products manufactured in Canada.

According to the BNQ, this new standard aims to meet the needs of industry, consumers and regulatory authorities; it applies to all organizations performing plastics recycling (recyclers), plastics sorting (sorting centres), plastics processing (packers) and plastics transforming (converters) as well as brand owners whose products contain plastics, that incorporate them into a new product.

This new National Standard of Canada (NSC) specifies the requirements for determining the content of recycled plastic introduced into the production process of the end product and the procedures for tracing the products with recycled plastic content entering the supply chain, and establishes the basic requirements for classifying a product based on its origin and treatment (mechanical or chemical). Finally, it has been developed to be used as a reference document as part of certification activities of the applicable products.

“Organizations are striving to include a greater proportion of recycled plastic in manufactured products, and governments are considering mandating the use or recycled content in certain products,” said Isabelle Landry, principal director, Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ). “Therefore, it will be essential to have a standardized method for calculating and verifying the recycled content of products. This new consensus-based standard, combined with certification rules, will ensure fair competition conditions for industries adopting them, and will give consumers confidence in the labelling inherent to the recycled content of products.”

The standard CAN/BNQ 3840-100 Recycled Plastic Content Products is available for free on the BNQ website: https://www.bnq.qc.ca/en/standardization/environment/recycled-plastic-content-products.html.

The BNQ, an administrative unit of Investissement Québec, is the reference organization for standardization and certification in Quebec. It develops consensus-based standards and certification protocols in accordance with the rules of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The BNQ is accredited by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC).