sustainability | Strategy
Right: Philipps used EcoDesign priniciples to raise the
recycled plastic content of its SENSEO Up
coffee machine to 13%
recycled material was injected into the mould. The EcoDesign team overcame this by using a different architecture for the coffee maker built around an internal frame that is not visible to the end user. This frame is made of 40% reinforced PP. A second design challenge was in the introduction of
recycled plastics into the baseplate. A 90% recycled ABS from post-consumer electronic waste was used and the part was textured to give the recycled plastic a higher quality look and feel. The designers also opted for one matt black colour for the entire range instead of a number of colour variations. The baseplate was then made less visible by designing the machine to focus attention on the coloured housing above it. Philipps says recycled plastics cannot be used in
coloured parts or in areas of its products that come into contact with food. However, the EcoDesign approach meant the recycled plastic content of the coffee maker amounts to 13%.
Packaging challenges While sustainability is a challenge for brand owners in all sectors, it is perhaps the packaging industry that feels the most intense scrutiny. While plastics have undoubtedly provided considerable benefits in terms of weight reduction, resource efficiency and protective barrier properties, their visibility and durability puts them at the centre of the sustainability debate and has seeded a number of enviromentally-focused initiatives from major brand owners. One of the most significant is the Plant PET Technol- ogy Collaborative (PTC) - a strategic working group set up in 2012 focused on the research and development of polymers made entirely from plant-sourced materials. The group consists of The Coca-Cola Company, Ford Motor Company, HJ Heinz, NIKE and Proctor & Gamble and was created with the goal of realising sustainable production of plant-based
Right: Coca-
Cola has distrib- uted more than 35m of its 30% bio-based PlantBottles
worldwide since its 2011 launch. It launched the first 100% bio-based PET bottles at the Milan Expo in May this year
78 COMPOUNDING WORLD | September 2015
PET for use in a variety of products, including packaging. The collaborative venture builds on the progress of
Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle technology, which converts natural sugars found in plants into component ingredi- ents for production of PET for bottles. Such packaging is chemically identical to petrochemical-derived PET so looks, functions and recycles like the traditional polymer but offers a reduced environmental footprint. PlantBottle packaging uses natural sugars from
sugar cane and waste from the sugar cane manufactur- ing process. It is suitable for a variety of packaging sizes and used for a number of brands. Heinz licences the technology from Coca-Cola for select Heinz ketchup bottles in the USA and Canada, for example. Since the launch of PlantBottle, Coca-Cola says it
has distributed more than 35m bottles in around 40 countries and estimates it has helped save the equivalent annual emissions of more than 315,000
metric tonnes of CO2. Currently, only the MEG (mo- noethylene glycol) component of the PET is plant- derived, so the bottles are only 30% plant-based. But the company is continuing to develop the technology and recently unveiled a PET bottle made entirely from plant-based material at the Milan Expo. This used both bio-based MEG and PTA (purified terephthalic acid). Since 2011 Coca-Cola has been working with
Virent to develop BioFormPX paraxylene (used to produce the PTA in 100% plant-based PET resin). In 2014 Coca-Cola made an additional invest- ment to support an expansion of Virent’s demonstration plant capability in Wisconsin in the US to help scale up the separation and purification steps of the production process and produce larger quantities of BioFormPX. Other members of the PTC consortium, H J
www.compoundingworld.com
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