Plastic Packaging

Walkers is announcing the rollout of new packaging for Sunbites range.

The new packaging is made with 50% recycled plastic. The change is set to reduce Sunbites’ use of virgin plastic by over 200 tonnes over the next two years.

The range is also now classified as non-HFSS. The reformulation follows months of trials at Walkers’ R&D centre aimed at reducing salt and sugar.

The launch forms part of PepsiCo’s health and sustainability plan.

Sainsbury’s has switched its own-brand mushroom punnets from plastic to cardboard, in a move which will save over 775 tonnes of plastic, equivalent to 52 million pieces of plastic a year.

The swap marks the retailer’s biggest single plastics removal in its history – equivalent to the weight of 43 full London double-decker buses.

The change will be rolled out to all 13 own-brand lines including whole baby button, closed cup, organic and chestnut mushrooms by the end of the month.

True to its name, SimpliCycle provides ease and function by streamlining mechanical recycling. Comprised of low-density thermoplastic elastomer (TPE), the valves float during the recycling sorting process, separating them from the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) stream; from there, they are recycled in the polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) stream. When assembled into a compatible Aptar closure, SimpliCycle creates a fully recyclable solution for use with PET, PE or PP containers.

Plastic packaging for fresh fruits and vegetables will be banned from January 1 in France as the country phases out single-use plastic. Fresh food producers say, however, that they aren't ready yet as little alternative has been found to replace plastic packaging.

In September, 19 companies submitted 22 solution proposals to Moelven Wood's packaging challenge - to find a more sustainable packaging for their wooden interior panels.

Out of these, Ahlstrom, Billerud, Boxon, Lignin Industries, and T-Emballage were selected to work on the challenge during MoelvenHackathon. The innovation competition was arranged by the forestry bioeconomy cluster Paper Province and held in Karlstad, Sweden, on December 11 and 12.

Billerud was the winner

Tesco is scrapping plastic packaging from its own-brand pocket tissues, in a move that the UK’s largest supermarket says will eliminate almost 35 tonnes of new soft plastic waste each year.

It is the first big supermarket to make the change, which will result in the individual packaging and the wrapping around multipacks of Tesco tissues in its gentle white and balm ranges being replaced with Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper packs.