Sustainability

The beauty and personal care industry is worth over $500 billion a year and the market is expected to grow annually by 4.75%. Accordingly, the forerunners have eagerly been looking for sustainable packaging solutions. While around 90% of the cosmetics market consist of water-based emulsions, there has not been an alternative for water-based products that biodegrades without leaving permanent microplastics behind. Now, Sulapac has invented a patent pending material for them.

The etailer states that it now exclusively uses a polythene packaging, Marpak Green, in its warehouse – a polymer made from sugarcane: "Marpak Green film retains the same functional properties as regular packaging, but is 100% recyclable. Plus, its production process removes CO2 from the atmosphere," states CEO Martin Seeley.

Last fall, Margus Vetsa, visiting lecturer in environmental management at Tallinn University, checked hundreds of municipal waste containers in Tartu, as part of the "PrügiBingo" project, which aimed to find out how keen the city's residents are on sorting their household waste. It turned out, that 96 percent of the mixed municipal waste containers examined, contained waste that shouldn't really be disposed of there.

British sustainable packaging company Frugalpac has beaten off competition from Coca-Cola, Corona Beer, and Stella Artois to win global packaging innovation awards for its paper Frugal Bottle.

The Frugal Bottle and US wine brand Signal 7 Wines won the Best in Class for Technical Design in Packaging Innovation at PAC Global’s Packaging Awards at the Futures Edge Summit in New York City. They also received an Award of Distinction in the Sustainable Design category.

AmSty is a North American polystyrene manufacturer that specialises in circular recycling. The products on offer will be made with AmSty’s post-consumer recycled material derived from its recycling technologies.

Based on a mass-balance approach, certain Pactiv Evergreen packaging will use AmSty’s ISCC PLUS-certified recycled polystyrene. According to the company, “ISCC PLUS is an internationally recognised certification process for circular content, which audits the supply chain from end-to-end”.

Finnish startup Fiberwood, a producer of 100% ecological wood fibre insulation and packaging materials made from mechanical wood industry side streams, has raised a late seed funding round. The round was led by Metsä Group’s innovation company Metsä Spring, and the round included public financing from Business Finland. The funding will be used to develop and scale up the production capabilities of its pilot plant as it heads into industrial-level continuous production.

Made with recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the new 24-ounce, 32-ounce and 1-gallon bottles divert recycled plastic from landfills, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and alleviate the environmental impact of drilling for virgin petroleum.  

One of the first results is a biobased plastic wrap made from coffee grounds. Coffee is a popular beverage in Germany, too: In 2022, the turnover rate for coffee was 4.77 kilograms per capita. In the UK, with 2.8 kilograms per capita the consumption is less, but the British love for coffee is nevertheless great and produces large amounts of organic waste in form of coffee grounds.