"With plastics in the ocean playing a major role in the health of many fisheries around the world, we're taking the lead in bringing an alternative to poly bags to the market," says Grundéns CEO David Mellon. "Sustainability is a journey, and we are constantly striving to improve the environmental performance of our own products, packaging, and operations. This new compostable packaging will allow customers to drop it into their own home or municipal compost stream, confident they aren't adding plastic waste into the environment."

Grundéns is now using 100% biodegradable packaging made from a Polylactide (PLA) whose raw material is glucose from corn starch. It will fully decompose in under 1 year and can be placed in a household or municipal composting system by cutting it up into strips. All new products shipped in 2021 will be in compostable packaging, while existing inventory will be transitioned to the new packaging in the coming months.

The packaging was produced in 6 different sizes, ensuring the minimum amount of packaging is used depending on the size of the product being shipped. Is also cuts down on the amount of needless air that is often shipped around the world due to excess packaging.

The packaging project is intended to be open source, with information about the supplier printed on the packaging itself. Grundéns encourages other brands to follow suit and increase the rate at which plastic bags are eliminated from the supply chain. A dedicated sustainability landing page on Grundéns website provides additional information about how Grundéns is living up to its purpose of being a better environmental steward. Learn more about the packaging and the brand's sustainability journey here: https://Grundéns.com/sustainability/.

Starting Spring 2021, Grundéns has also begun using ECONYL, a fabric made from recycled fishing nets that would otherwise end up in landfill or as "ghost nets" in our oceans. For Spring 21, this new material is available in two products, the Sidereal Boardshorts for men, and the Circe Capri for women, part of Grundéns  NetSourced collection that will expand in coming seasons.

The founders of WaWaah Water were determined to launch a healthy water drink for children and even got their own kids involved in the development process. Adding essential vitamins for kids, B5, B12 and C to water, which does not include any sugar or preservatives, the new drinks focus only on the good – and this also includes the packaging.

Reducing carbon footprint compared to a standard carton pack, more than 95 per cent of the packaging components are linked to forest-based renewable material and 100 per cent are responsibly sourced. The polymers used are linked to tall oil, a residue extracted from wood in the paper-making industry, as a forest-based feedstock.

Philippe Deben, co-founder of The Happy Healthy Kids Company, said: “The name WaWaah came from a friend who could never pronounce water correctly as a child. Having created a drink that contains only the best for our kids, we turned to SIG for the most sustainable packaging solution. Finding a package which helps to protect the future planet of our children was essential.”

This step change on packaging will commence on a 12-week trial basis in 100 stores, with plans to roll out the changes to more products if successful. As one of Ireland’s favourite grocery items this change will have a significant impact on reducing plastic waste.

The new paper bags will carry the green ‘widely recycled’ logo and can be recycled at home using the kerbside collection infrastructure. The new single ply paper bag is responsibly sourced from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accredited material and replaces the existing plastic 1kg bags. Plastic components of the 2.5kg potato paper bag, which contained a non-recyclable net window, will be removed and will be fully recyclable.

The packaging change will initially cover Tesco’s range of ‘New Season Early Potatoes’. The move will also reduce the amount of paper used in Tesco’s 2.5kg new season potatoes bag by 30% and remove almost 50,000 non-recyclable 1kg new season plastic bags from the waste system annually.

Over the course of the trial, over 130,000 packs of Irish grown new season early Premier and Queens potatoes are expected to be sold across Ireland in the new packaging.

Joe Manning, Commercial Director, Tesco Ireland, said he was pleased that Tesco is again leading the way in removing excess and non-recyclable material from its business as part of its ongoing 4Rs (Remove, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) strategy, which includes plans to make all packaging fully recyclable by 2025.

In 2020, the Tesco Ireland business changed its waste processes at store level, backhauling food waste for anaerobic digestion at Green Generation creating renewable gas which the business purchases to power six of its stores.

Those bits that come inside your packages are called peanuts, but of course they are made from polystyrene, not anything natural. But what if we could send things packaged in popcorn—the actual food, not another plastic-derived counterpart—instead?

That’s the hope of researchers at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who have developed the plant-based packaging and are already in talks for its commercial use. Whereas polystyrene-based packaging like Styrofoam takes centuries to break down and is made from nonrenewable fossil fuels, popcorn is easily renewable, biodegradable, and could even be composted at home.

The idea to use popcorn as packaging first came to Alireza Kharazipour, head of the research group that developed the packaging and a professor at the university’s Faculty of Forest Sciences and Forest Ecology, when he was at the movies. “In the dark, the popcorn felt just as light as styropol foam balls,” he says. “The next day I bought corn and made popcorn at home in a pot.” Eventually, those experiments moved into the lab at the University of Göttingen.

Styrofoam is such good packaging material and insulation because it’s made of 95% air, but it’s still especially harmful to the environment. Foam polystyrene is made from petroleum, is difficult to recycle and often not even accepted by recycling programs, and can take centuries to decompose, breaking down into microplastics that threaten wildlife and environments along the way.

But just like polystyrene, popcorn is filled with air too. Kharazipour and his research group use crushed corn, made from the inedible by-products of cornflakes production, and use a steam process to expand that crushed corn into what the researchers call “granulated” popcorn. “The products are very light because popcorn granules are filled with air like honeycombs,” Kharazipour says. “When grain maize expands into popcorn, the volume increases by 15% to 20%.”

The popcorn packaging can be made with these by-products, or from corn grown anywhere. Using different molds, the popcorn can be turned into various packaging shapes. The researchers also coated the expanded popcorn in a thin layer of bioplastic so that the packaging is water-repellent. The result, Kharazipour says, is a packaging material that is just as strong as polystyrene but can be easily cut with a circular saw and can be reused, shredded down, or composted at home.

Each year, the U.S. alone produces about 3 million tons of polystyrene, mainly for packaging and food service items, according to environmental consultant Green Dining Alliance. Across the world, packaging is the biggest purchaser of plastics, accounting for about 40% of total plastic usage. Not all of that is polystyrene or Styrofoam-like packaging, but Kharazipour and his research team hope they can make a dent in what is. The university has already entered a licensing agreement with a grain and cereal company called Nordgetreide for commercial use of the popcorn-packaging making process, and is working on manufacturing various popcorn packaging products. It’s a step toward creating, as Kharazipour says, “a clean environment free of plastic-based products.”

The trio are joined by other major food brands including PepsiCo and Unilever in the scheme – which is though to the first of its kind in the region, to help deliver faster progress on environmental protection measures.

Known as the Flexible Plastic Fund, it is being led by producer compliance scheme, Ecosurety, with support from environmental charity, Hubbub.

In collaboration with manufacturers, retailers and recyclers, the Fund intends to improve flexible plastic recycling and reduce plastic pollution by giving the material a stable value. This will in turn increase the supply of recycled plastic enabling industry to become more ‘circular’ and meet the forthcoming UK plastic packaging tax obligations. This will motivate investment in much needed jobs and infrastructure to make flexible plastic recycling a financially sustainable system in the UK.

New research from the University of Sheffield suggests there is strong consumer demand for recycling flexible plastic with 95% of participants saying they would be willing to recycle their flexible plastics.

Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have already signed up to support the initiative by hosting flexible plastic collection points in selected stores across the UK. Several other major retailers are set to follow suit. As a result, recycling this material will become increasingly accessible to consumers, as they will be able to recycle all types of flexible plastic packaging with participating retailers.

With just 16% of UK local authorities currently offering household collection of flexible plastics, the amounts of this material collected for recycling are low. Flexible plastics include plastic bags, wrappers, films, pouches, packets and sachets and is described as ‘plastic bags and wrapping’, ‘soft plastics’ or ‘flexible plastics’. The Fund will guarantee a minimum value of £100 per tonne of recycled product to incentivise recyclers to process flexible plastic.

The long-term ambition of the Fund is to drive progress towards creating a circular, UK based flexible plastic recycling market that allows flexible plastic recycling via household collections. As part of the UK’s drive to boost recycling, WRAP recently announced new recommendations to support flexible plastic recycling.

Flexible plastic represented 22% of all UK consumer plastic packaging in 2019 but only 6% was recycled3. This type of plastic must be processed in a different way to other plastics due to its unique properties – it often contaminates rigid plastic recycling and clogs up machinery – something that could be overcome by creating a separate flexible plastic recycling stream.

The initiative will provide fully audited transparency – at least 80% of the plastics collected will be recycled in the UK – rising to 100% by 2023. Until 2023, where there are currently limits in UK capacity and technology, up to 20% could be exported to qualifying facilities in Europe.The recycled plastic will be turned into a range of products including non-food grade plastic, non-food-grade film and food-grade film.

Founded by Franco/U.S.-based recycling company TerraCycle, Loop has partnered with Aeon to encourage refillable packaging systems in their retail outlets. The alliance has garnered the support of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that wants to promote the “three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle)” to create better sustainable foundations for consumers across the city.

Aeon will ditch its traditionally used disposable containers and packages for daily consumption items like foods, detergents and shampoos that lead to unnecessary waste and fuel the effects of climate change. Instead, the partnership will now see these very items in new sustainable packaging like stainless steel and glass that are not only highly durable but can be used multiple times.

Priced slightly higher than normal products, consumers first purchase these Loop products in a reusable package and after they have finished using the product, they can drop the used container in the Loop return box at any Aeon store. Once the system collects the container and confirms it is the very same container, in two weeks’ time they will receive a refund that will include the amount of the deposit plus the consumption tax of the container that will be credited to your bank account through the Loop app anywhere between Yen¥110 (approx. US$1.01) and Yen¥880 (approx. US$8.08) depending on the product.

Next, a specialized company will clean the returned item and send them back to manufacturers that will take the packages and make it ready for use again.

Initially, Aeon has launched 13 products by 6 manufacturers in Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture and Chiba districts with plans to add more products by the end of August 2021.

With this new initiative, Aeon is the only domestic retailer that can handle products from Loop for around one year from the beginning of sales.

The supermarket chain even partnered with the Hong Kong-based environmental charity Greeners Action to give customers coupons and discounts if they carry their won reusables and avoid the use of single-use plastic items when they order from in-store food outlets. The NGO had recently called the disposable trend in Hong Kong a “plastic disaster” given that a study showed that every week, Hong Kongers use 100 million disposable plastic takeaway items.

Apart from this, Aeon has been involved in several environmental conservation activities like ‘Bringing Shopping Bags Campaign’ and the collection of food trays and PET bottles.