Three industry trends are providing incentives for innovation, and creating new opportunities and threats for players in the global protective transit packaging business.
The Plastics Recycling Europe and The Association of Plastic Recyclers have developed a global definition governing the use of the term “recyclable” as it relates to plastics packaging and products, in hopes to provide a consistent metric to guide the efforts of sustainability for plastics in the Circular Economy.
The initial phase of the first-ever industry effort designed to provide packaging manufacturers the ability to assess the sortability of their products in the waste stream was unveiled at the The Association of Plastic Recyclers’ (APR) Member Meeting earlier this month in Houston.
Consumers and the industry play vital parts in keeping waste out of oceans. The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is recognizing World Oceans Day today, June 8, by highlighting the industry’s reduction in plastic use, and educating consumers about ways they can help keep waste out of our oceans and litter off our shorelines.
Italian food company Barilla is partnering with TerraCycle to provide a free, easy way to recycle its Ready Pasta packaging. The Ready Pasta Recycling Program offers consumers a method of recycling the instant pasta pouches.
After disposable coffee cups and plastic bottles, pouches could be the next target in the waste reduction landscape, due to the difficulty of recycling these packs, says GlobalData, a data and analytics company. There is confusion over the use of the Green Dot symbol on pouch packs. The symbol is a mark to show that the supplier has made a financial contribution toward recycling them, yet consumers believe it means they can be recycled in household recycling systems.
Carola K. Herbst from the DLG’s (German Agricultural Society) Food Competence Center, speaking at Anuga FoodTec 2018, which took place in Germany last month, said the lifestyle of consumers dictated what and how people want to eat.
With the majority of global consumers already recycling, demand for environmentally friendly packaging will increase further in response to heightened publicity around plastics ending up in the ocean, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
The Recycling Partnership, a national nonprofit that applies corporate funding to improve recycling efforts in communities across the country, is pleased to announce that Berry Global Inc. has joined on as its newest funding partner, as recycling is a core component of Berry’s commitment to sustainability.
Since the introduction of the corrugated industry’s recyclability protocol in 2005, use of wax has steadily dropped off. In 2016, the corrugated industry shipped less than 10 billion square feet of waxed boxes, just 2.5 percent of total shipments.
