Designing for Recycling: How Lucro is Helping Brands Build Packaging with Purpose

As the world moves toward a circular economy, one principle becomes undeniably clear: what we design today determines what we can recycle tomorrow.

From India’s Plastic waste management policies & India Plastics Pact to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment, the message is the same—packaging must be designed to be recyclable from the start. Because no matter how advanced recycling technologies become, they can't fix a design that was never meant to be part of the circular loop.

At Lucro, we’ve made this principle the foundation of our packaging innovation. We're not just recycling better—we're helping brands rethink packaging from the ground up.

Most of the packaging we see on shelves today was designed for product performance—not recyclability. Multi-layered plastic packaging, made by combining incompatible materials like PET, PE, aluminium, or nylon, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Even if it protects the product, it usually ends up in landfills.

According to the India Plastics Pact, improving packaging design is key to making plastics 100% reusable or recyclable by 2030. And the Ellen MacArthur Foundation goes further, emphasizing that eliminating problematic formats and shifting to mono-materials is critical to keeping plastic in the economy and out of the environment.

Lucro’s Solution: Designing for Circularity

We work directly with brands to move away from multi-layered packaging to recyclable mono-material solutions—without compromising functionality.

Lucro’s design-for-recycling model has helped multiple brands redesign legacy packaging formats to meet recyclability guidelines, replace non-recyclable multi-material pouches with recyclable mono-material films and integrate PCR content without compromising quality or shelf appeal.

Our in-house team works across design, testing, recycling, and processing, ensuring every solution we offer can be successfully recycled and reprocessed at end-of-life.

Our approach aligns with global and local best practices from:

• The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which encourages businesses to eliminate unnecessary plastics, innovate to ensure recyclability, and circulate materials through reuse and recycling.
• WRAP UK’s Plastic Pact, which promotes design changes like removing carbon black pigments, using recyclable adhesives, and avoiding complex laminates.
• UNEP’s Global Plastic Treaty discussions, which highlight design-for-recycling as a core principle for regulatory alignment.
• India Plastics Pact: An ambitious, collaborative initiative that sets clear targets for making all plastic packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030, increasing the use of post-consumer recycled content, and eliminating problematic plastics. Lucro’s work directly supports these goals by helping brands convert complex packaging formats into recyclable alternatives and by supplying high-quality PCR materials.
• India’s Plastic Waste Management Rules (PWM), India: India’s PWM Rules—especially the 2022 Amendment—place Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) on brands and businesses, making them accountable for the collection, recycling, and environmentally sound disposal of plastic packaging. These rules push companies toward packaging that is easier to collect, sort, and recycle.

Designing for recycling is a business responsibility not just a technical decision. As greenwashing comes under scrutiny and new regulations demand traceability and transparency, brands can no longer afford packaging that isn't truly recyclable.

Lucro is here to partner with forward-thinking companies who want to lead the shift. Let’s build packaging that’s designed for the future—not destined for a landfill.