Eco Pack

New Recyclability Tool Available Online

By British Plastics & Rubber,

Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), Europe’s plastic recycling industry body, has launched a new tool that it says can help packaging manufacturers improve the recyclability of their products.

During the group’s conference, entitled ‘Let’s work together on plastics packaging design’ at the InterPack Trade Fair in Düsseldorf, Germany, PRE explained that the ultimate aim of the tool is to improve the design of plastics packaging in respect to its recyclability.

In a video message from the European Commissioner for the Environment, Janez Potočnik stated that: “Recycling starts in the product design phase. The key to more sustainable plastics is better design of plastics and plastics products.”

“RecyClass is based on the existing recycling guidelines, the functioning of today’s recycling markets and the experience of the plastics recyclers,” said Paolo Glerean (PRE Board Member). “The users of the tool can instinctively understand how to improve the recyclability of their packaging,” Glerean added.

Dr. Michael Scriba (PRE Board Member) said: “This tool is an opportunity for the industry to work together, learn mutually and improve the position of plastic packaging on the EU markets.”

The RecyClass tool enables assessment of any kind of plastic packaging, claims PRE. Users are said to be able to obtain information on how environmentally-friendly their packaging is, and provides improvement ideas for packaging design. It is now available online (www.recyclass.eu) in English and German languages for a free trial period of six months.
The conference was attended by plastics converters, recyclers, packaging designers and brand owners.

To see the full article from British Plastics & Rubber, click here.

Vegware Revamp Green Britain Compostable Cups

By Packaging Europe,

Vegware, the UK’s first and only completely compostable food packaging company, have launched their revamped Green Britain cups. The compostable 8oz and 12oz double-wall cups are lined with low-carbon cornstarch not plastic, and feature a green Union Jack heart.

Communications Director Lucy Frankel explains, “Our original Green Britain cup was hugely popular in summer 2012, with UK caterers keen to show their green credentials to international visitors. We like to keep things fresh and last year we discontinued the design. But our clients had other ideas and kept demanding it. We gave in and revamped the design, with the green flag now in a heart shape. With Vegware the UK’s 30th fastest growing company, we see it as a celebration that the UK really does love all things green. And it’s a very pretty summer cup!

These cups are made in the British Isles from two layers of sustainably sourced EU board. The cornstarch lining has a carbon footprint 51% lower than a conventional plastic lining, quantified by Vegware’s Eco Audits for any order quantity. Like all Vegware, these cups are completely compostable and designed to be recycled with food waste, and their free service foodwastenetwork.org helps any UK business set up food waste recycling. This cup won Best New Product in the first ever Climate Week Awards.

A subtle line of text by the join reads: ‘Completely compostable cup made in the British Isles by @vegware. Lined with cornstarch, not plastic, because green tastes better. Caution – green is HOT!’ These special edition cups come in packs of 25 or cases of 500.

From the three cutlery items offered five years ago, Vegware’s range has grown to over 200 completely compostable products, including many award-winning innovations resulting from the firm’s active R&D programme. All Vegware’s catering disposables are made from renewable or recycled eco materials and are completely compostable – so unlike most foodservice packaging, Vegware can be simply recycled after use.

To see the full article from Packaging Europe, click here.

Click to see Quantrelles Eco-Pack range of products.

Dell Invests in Carbon-Negative Packaging Solutions

By Heather Clancy,

Dell continues to raise the bar for the high-tech industry when it comes to innovative packaging choices and groundbreaking recycling initiatives.

This week, its sustainability team is disclosing details about two specific industry “firsts”, both of which are the result of close, collaborative sustainable business partnerships born in its supply chain.

First, Dell has become the second high-profile company to announce a deal with AirCarbon, an innovative plastic material from Newlight Technologies created by pulling carbon out of the air. Newlight, which last year got a $4m grant from the Department of Energy, recently announced a relationship with Sprint, under which it is making “carbon-negative” iPhone accessories.

Dell’s initial plan is to use AirCarbon for sleeves to protect new Latitude series notebooks. It connected with Newlight after a conversation with another supply chain partner, said Oliver Campbell, director of worldwide procurement at Dell.

In addition to the Newlight deal, the technology giant is turning to long-time manufacturing partner, Wistron GreenTech, to pull off another big breakthrough: becoming the first company in the IT industry to earn a closed-loop recycling validation from UL Environment.

Dell’s forthcoming OptiPlex 3030 All-in-One desktop computer (due out by June) will be the first to contain a minimum of 10 percent post-consumer recycled plastic, collected through Dell’s ongoing electronic-waste recovery processes, the company said. The recycled e-waste material is specifically used to make parts such as the stand and the backing for the computer, according to an infographic from Dell.

“We have a long-standing commitment to conduct our business responsibly,” said Dell CEO Michael Dell, in remarks prepared for the Fortune Br
ainstorm Green conference where the initiatives were disclosed. “AirCa
rbon packaging and closed-loop recycled plastics are terrific innovations and big steps forward as we work with our customers and partners toward our 2020 goals.”

To see the full article from BusinessGreen, click here.

Tracking Consumer Attitudes Towards Packaging

By Jim Johnson,

Steve Kazanjian says, is not surprising: packaging helps determine what consumers purchase.

But the vice president of global creative for MeadWestvaco Corp., also has this to add: packaging, now more than ever, helps determine a consumer’s relationship with a product far beyond that decision to make an initial purchase.

“It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the role that packaging has played in that brand/consumer relationship has changed irrevocably over the last 20 years, 10 years and even 5 years,” he said during a recent presentation at the Packaging Conference in Orlando.

“At one point, when we thought about packaging, we really just thought about the various functional aspects of the package. So storage and convenience, breakage, temperature, loss, security, things like that. Getting it from the manufacturer through the supply chain and into the retail chain,” Kazanjian said.

While those considerations are just as important as ever, modern consumers view packaging through a larger prism.

“There’s also this new role in packaging. And this new role in packaging that we’ve seen over last five or 10 years has been the emotional role of packaging, the consumer side. The role that packaging plays past retail through use and into the end-of-life,” he said.

MeadWestvaco is out with its second annual Packaging Matters study of consumer attitudes toward packaging.

It’s an important topic for the Richmond, Va.-based company, which gets 83 percent of its $5.3 billion of annual sales from packaging, including those made from plastics.

“Packaging influences purchasing behavior. This really isn’t any new spoiler alert for any of us. We know this. However, there’s some other interesting things that are going on with this as well. Packaging during use also influences repurchase behavior in ways that we couldn’t even dream of,” Kazanjian said in Orlando.

Packaging satisfaction, he said, helps drive product satisfaction that helps drive brand preference that helps drive repeat purchasing behavior.

To see the full article from PlasticsNews, click here.

Plastics are a Sustainable Packaging Choice

Sustainable Packaging – By Gayle S. Putrich,

Six major categories of plastic packaging significantly reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions compared to packaging made with alternative materials, according to a new study.

Compiled by Franklin Associates for the American Chemistry Council and the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, and using 2010 as a baseline year, the data shows replacing plastic packaging with alternative materials would result in a 4.5 times more packaging weight, an 80 percent increase in energy use and 130 percent more global warming potential.

“The benefits hold up across a range of different kinds of applications and materials,” said Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for ACC. “Because plastics use so much less material in the first place it results in dramatic greenhouse gas reduction, and that’s just the start. It really adds up across the different types of packaging, to the equivalent of taking more than 15 million cars off the road.”

The study pits the six major packaging resins — low density polyethylene, high density PE, polypropylene, PVC, polystyrene, expanded PS, PET — against paper, glass, steel, aluminum, textiles, rubber, and cork. It considers the implications of the materials used in caps and closures, beverage containers, other rigid containers, shopping bags, shrink wrap, and other flexible packaging in a detailed life cycle assessment. Individual studies on particular products have been done before, Christman said, on products ranging from plastic pouches vs. cans for tuna and EPS vs. paper cups. But the new study, titled Impact of Plastics Packaging on Life Cycle Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States and Canada, is comparatively sweeping. It contains more than 50 tables and 16 charts and illustrations and examines each of the major life cycle stages for packaging: raw material production, packaging fabrication, distribution transport, post-consumer disposal and recycling.

To see the full article from PlasticsNews, click here.

Leonie Knox-Peeble Speaks About Plastic Packaging

By Alessandra Lacaita,

Plastic has grown significantly as a packaging material over the last decade. Is it still increasing its market share? Where do you identify further opportunities for greater use of plastic packaging?

With a turnover of €40 billion (2009), plastic packaging is market leader and represents nearly 40% of the total packaging market turnover. Between now and 2016, market share is forecasted to continue to grow in both the flexible and rigid packaging sectors, with the food sector being the biggest end-use sector with around 17 million tonnes forecasted for 2016 globally.

Part of the rising consumption is offset by light-weighting in rigid articles and reducing film thickness, basically doing more with less and becoming more resource efficient. In addition, the average plastic packaging weight has been reduced by 28% over the last ten years without compromising either strength or durability.

Opportunities for greater use of plastic packaging are clear in the food sector, and more specifically, for packing fruit and vegetables. Indeed, according to the European Commission, 90 mio tonnes of food are wasted each year in the EU, and if we look at Germany, for example, the largest potential for avoiding household food waste lies with vegetables (which constitute 26% of avoidable food waste) and fruit (18%).

Some may question whether more packaging is the way forward when it comes to making Europe more resource efficient; but the figures are clear: the resources required to produce food outweigh by far those needed to manufacture the packaging – and saving food should not only be among our priorities from an environmental point of view, but from an ethical one as well.
Where we do see that more effort is required is at the end-of-life: no packaging, be it plastic or other, should end up in landfills.

To see the full article from PackagingEurope, click here.

New Plastic Packaging That Removes Emissions

By BusinessGreen,

A U.K. company claims to have produced a new type of plastic packaging that not only is 100 percent recyclable, but also actively removes CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

The new Polyair material developed by Polythene U.K. is made from sugar cane and uses photosynthesis to capture CO2 emissions and release oxygen. The company claims that for every ton of the product manufactured, 2.5 tons of CO2 will be removed.

James Woollard, managing director at Polythene U.K., said Polyair could be used in a range of products, including bags, covers, tubes, films, wraps and stretch film, and would reduce the amount of polythene waste these products generate.

“Using a bio-based material, such as Polyair, at a percentage of 60 percent in film reduces the CO2 emissions to zero even when you take into consideration the energy used for manufacturing and shipping,” he added in a statement. “Put simply, Polyair is truly the greenest material we know of.”

To see the full article from GreenBiz, click here.

Nestle Reducing Packaging

Reducing Packaging By Charlotte Eyre,

Swiss giant Nestle SA reduced the weight of its packaging by 601,147 tons over the 1991-2010 period. Out of this total saving, 34 percent was plastics and laminates.

Philippe Roulet, head of global packaging materials and training, said the use of plastics and laminates has gone down partly because of changes to water bottles. He was speaking at the Renewable Plastics conference in Amsterdam this week.

The bottle for Ozarka, a bottled water brand sold in the US, is now made with only 9.3g of resin, he said, showing a slide which demonstrated that bottles for carbonated drinks were sometimes made with more than 20g of materials.

Roulet says use of materials is not the only thing to consider in terms of making the food supply chain more sustainable.

He said Nestle has a holistic approach. To achieve this, it uses the packaging eco-design tool PIQET (Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool). PIQET looks at all areas of the supply chain, comparing the environmental impact of all areas of production.

To see the full article from PlasticsNews, click here.

Coca-Cola Leans Towards Eco-Friendly Bottles

By Lara O’Reilly,

Coca-Cola is rolling out new packaging for its 500ml drinks range as part of its ambition to make all of its bottles from plant-based materials and recycled plastic by 2020.

The new PlantBottle packaging is made from up to 22.5% renewable plant-based “PET” materials and up to 25% recycled plastic. Coca-Cola claims the bottles are more environmentally friendly than their previous versions because they will reduce the company’s dependency on fossil fuels.

The bottles, which are rolling out today across the Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero range, will be identified with a PlantBottle logo and on-pack messaging.

The launch of the new range will be supported by print ads and advertorials across national and regional media.

Eco-designer Wayne Hemingway has also designed an umbrella, made from five plastic bottles, to support the new packaging rollout. The umbrella can be bought from Harvey Nichols from today (12 September) at an offer price of £10 when they buy a drink from the PlantBottle range.

To see the full article from MarketingWeek, click here.

Eco-Friendly Packaging Is Commercially Beneficial

By Marcus Hill,

Developing an ethical supply chain that includes sustainable packaging can bring about far-reaching business benefits. Environmental responsibility is not at odds with profitability; in fact, it can help you to build your brand, win new contracts and safeguard the business’ reputation.

Whilst the majority of food and catering businesses agree that eco packaging is a ‘nice to have’, some believe that the cost is going to be prohibitive. But environmentally friendly packaging has become significantly more affordable in recent years – ‘eco’ is no longer shorthand for ‘expensive’. The economies of scale mean that companies like London Bio Packaging are able to offer increasingly competitive prices, owing to greater demand. We are also continuing to develop new methods and materials to lower the cost of recycled and compostable packaging.

It’s not all about product cost, however –switching to recycled and compostable packaging can add real value to your business and actually make you money. In order to assess the true impact and ROI of bringing sustainability into your business, it’s necessary to look at the bigger picture.

Today’s consumers and businesses are demanding more of the companies that they spend money with. Businesses are no longer judged solely on the quality of their products and services; supply chains and corporate ethics are increasingly influencing purchasing behaviour.  And the company that you keep is just as important as the way you behave – put simply, if your suppliers are unethical, then, by association, so are you.

To see the full article from Is4Profit, click here.