Tuesday, 12 January 2021 20:46

Sustainable Packaging

The right packaging is an important key to a successful product marketing. It works with your brand to broaden appeal and connect with your consumers.

The packaging industry plays a very important role in everyday life. Proof of this is that during this pandemic, that affects us all, it has not stopped for a single moment and has even doubled its productivity to meet the growing demand with increasingly extensive requirements. Both in food, medicine, hygiene, and other products.

Sustainable packaging is a relatively new addition to the environmental considerations for packaging. However, engaging in sustainable practices isn’t something that’s increasingly becoming the standard. Sustainable Packaging is simply packaging that is more sustainable or better for the environment. Reducing the environmental impact and ecological footprint.

This can happen in a number of ways:

  • Using raw 100% recycled or raw materials
  • Creating a circular economy around the packaging, extending its lifecycle.
  • Creating secondary uses and application for this
  • According to the European Packaging Association 68% of European consumers admit that making environmentally-friendly decisions has become more important to them over the past five years

    Many companies have committed to the development, improvement and application of this type of packaging, among which we can find:

    Frugal Paper Bottle

    Frugalpac offers an alternative to glass and a reduced packaging for these products.

    Frugal Bottle is a paper wine bottle made from 94% recycled paper with a food-grade liner to hold the wine or spirit.

    It uses Frugalpac technology to create a more sustainable bottle that’s lighter, uses recycled materials and can be recycled fully after use. The bottle is lighter than a normal glass bottle and uses 77% less plastic than a plastic bottle.






    Photo courtesy: www.frugalpac.com


    Multipack KeelClip

    Graphic Packaging International has designed the KeelClip system as a plastic-free replacement for beverage-can multipack carriers.

    The paperboard system’s structural design combines a clip, which holds the top of each can, with a keel that extends down between the rows of cans. The keel, whose structure is similar to that of a nautical keel, strengthens the top panel and boosts clip performance.

    A small amount of adhesive further secures each can to the keel. Cans may be glued into a position that showcases their brand graphics.


    Photo courtesy: www.packagingdigest.com


    Arjowiggins Translucent Barrier Paper

    Arjowiggins has launched Sylvicta, a sustainable alternative to plastics in packaging.

    Sylvicta is a translucent, functional barrier paper that preserves the quality of food and cosmetics just as well as conventional plastics while ensuring limited impact on the environment. The paper is fully recyclable, compostable, marine degradable and made from renewable raw materials.

    Through precision fibre refining, Arjowiggins’ R&D teams have developed this translucent paper with a natural bonding, without the need of any harmful chemicals. The result is a paper with a barrier to oxygen, aroma, mineral oils and fatty foodstuffs.


    Photo courtesy: www.arjowiggins.com


    VVT Plastic Bottles Using Citrus Peel

    Technology developed at VTT enables the use of pectin-containing agricultural waste, such as citrus peel and sugar beet pulp, as raw material for bio-based PEF-plastics for replacing fossil-based PET. The carbon footprint of plastic bottles can be lowered by 50% when replacing their raw material of PET with PEF polymers, which also provides a better shelf life for food.

    PEF is a fully recyclable and renewable high-performance plastic. Therefore, it opens up possibilities for the industries to reduce waste and have positive impact on the environment.

    “In the near future, you may buy orange juice in bottles that are made out of orange peel. VTT’s novel technology provides a circular approach to using food waste streams for high-performance food packaging material, and at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” shares Professor of Practice Holger Pöhler from VTT”.


    Photo courtesy: www.vttresearch.com


    Seed Phytonutrients

    Seed Phytonutrients company make clean and natural hair, face, and body products that are better for the environment and us. One way the brand is living up to this mission is by using more environmentally friendly packaging.

    Seed takes the title of making the first-ever shower-friendly paper bottle. Each bottle is made out of 100% post-consumer recycled paper and lined with a post-consumer recycled plastic liner, resulting in a bottle with 60% less plastic than a traditional one. When you shower, the paper will get wet (it's still paper), but thanks to a mineral coating it will dry quickly and look good as new in no time.


    Photo courtesy: www.plantbasedblonde.com


    H&M Paper Bag – Cloth Hanger

    H&M packaging concept includes a recycled paper bag that transforms into a coat hangar.


    Photo courtesy: www.trendhunter.com


    SAKATA INX BSR-Bio

    SAKATA INX introduced an environmentally-friendly UV inkjet ink for corrugated packaging applications.

    The sustainable ink option is formulated with 20-30% plant-derived materials, allowing brand owners and printers to benefit from reduced regulatory risk and measurable, reportable CO2 savings.

    SAKATA’s proprietary advanced technology for Nano-pigment dispersion enables their inkjet inks to have high performance jetting properties at very fast print speed, with high reliability for inkjet print heads. BSR-Bio consists of standard CMYK colors with Orange + Green or Orange + Violet as an option when a wider color gamut is required. It is extremely low odor and has high durability and good flexibility to reduce cracking problems.



    When Heineken Bottles Were Square

    As the story goes, Alfred Heineken had an epiphany while on a world tour of Heineken factories. When Heineken was on the Caribbean island of Curacao in 1960 he saw many bottles littering the beach due to the fact that the island had no economic means of returning the bottles to the bottling plants from which they had come. He was also concerned with the lack of affordable building materials and the inadequate living conditions plaguing Curacao's lower-class. Envisioning a solution for these problems, he found a dutch architect John Habraken to design what he called "a brick that holds beer."

    In 1963, Alfred Heineken created a beer bottle that could also function as a brick to build houses in impoverished countries.

    The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken, would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side, could be stacked easily with mortar or cement.




    Photo courtesy: www.archinect-com


    Published in Packaging

    Keep up with the latest trends about de digital printing industry and learn more about different technologies, equipment, media & substrates, inks, etc.

    Search