The head of sustainability at one of Europe’s leading packaging producers has said that brands are unlikely to move away from using plastic in packaging, despite a public perception that it is harmful to the environment.
Graeme Smith, innovation and sustainability manager for Mondi, spoke to letsrecycle.com about the company’s ‘Project Proof’ initiative aimed at testing opportunities for more recycled content in a wider range of plastic packaging.
Graeme Smith, innovation and sustainability manager for Mondi
One of the strands of Project Proof has been a demonstration of a prototype flexible PE plastic pouch incorporating up to 20% recycled content from post-consumer films. The packaging is suitable for use in packaging for detergents, replacing PET/PE multilayer laminates with a mono-material.
Through trials conducted as part of the project, Mondi used flexible plastic films sorted from household kerbside collections in Germany and Belgium, which were then separated and cleaned to provide a suitable feedstock for the new packaging product.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Mr Smith said: “We see a lot of solutions on the market that contain recycled content but when you delve a little deeper it is preferentially separated material, it is not necessarily fully circular collected from households. We felt that we needed to go for household collected material.”
Mondi concluded that the use of post-consumer flexible material was “arguably uneconomic,” but said that the project had “demonstrated what can be achieved for valuable end uses when the after-use material is appropriately engineered and cleaned.”
Food pouch
A second part of the project sought to create a recyclable PP pouch for food packaging, which is currently challenging due to the use of a mixture of aluminium and plastic to extend shelf life. It was concluded that further development in this area was required as current offerings did not achieve the basic minimum specifications set by the brand owners. Joint Development Agreements are being discussed for future research opportunities in this area.
Flexible packaging such as food pouches can contain a mixture of aluminium and plastic, meaning it is difficult to recycle
Mr Smith said that Project Proof had helped to demonstrate Mondi’s commitment to ensuring that more of its packaging can be recycled through existing collection systems – with a particular focus on using ‘mono’ materials comprising a single polymer or material input.
He said: “As far as Mondi is concerned we are trying to design our products to be more recyclable, so that when it does find its way into that collection stream, a recycler will want to collect Mondi material. They know it is a mono material, they know it is easy to recycle, and therefore gives it that chance to close the loop and be completely circular.”
Future
On the potential for brands to look at shifting their packaging away from plastic, to materials such as paper, metal or glass, for example, Mr Smith was more cautious in his assessment, arguing that the material must be ‘fit for purpose’ above all.
“We have a saying where we use paper where possible and plastic where useful,” he explained. “We appreciate that paper can be something that has great benefits. It is from a renewable source, it is biodegradable can be composted, and there are certain modifications that can be made to make best use of that packaging material.
“We have a saying where we use paper where possible and plastic where useful.”
“That is not to say that plastic still very much has its place. When you start looking at a comparison of a flexible plastic packaging material vs a rigid plastic, or even a glass or tin product you still need to show that the footprint that is generated for the full lifespan of the product can be substantially better.”
His comments come following a recent call by the packaging producer DS Smith for more brands to incorporate fibre-based materials as an alternative to plastic in food packaging to make the items more environmentally sound (see letsrecycle.com story).
Responding to these comments, Mr Smith said: “I would agree with some of the things that DS Smith has said. Mondi is 80% paper and 20% plastic, so there is a lot that we have in common. The approach that we would have is making sure that the packaging is fit for purpose is something that we would take on board, using paper wherever possible.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Plastic
