An in-depth session at the Australian Institute of Packaging conference earlier this week examined the important role recycled content plays in ensuring a business is not only meeting the 2025 National Packaging Targets but also becoming a truly circular business by design – and examined why recycled content is valuable to Pact Packaging NZ's client The Collective, Colgate-Palmolive and Wellman Packaging.
Case Study: The Collective’s kefir in rPET
Deanne Holdsworth, general manager, sales for Pact Packaging in New Zealand, discussed the journey taken by brand owner The Collective to introduce recycled plastic (rPET) packaging to its kefir probiotic yoghurt, maximising its sustainability outcome, while maintaining the structural integrity with a lighter weight pack.
“The Collective's drinking yoghurt has a really strong immunity and digestive benefit, so the product is really good for the gut, but we needed to try and find a way to ensure that there was good shelf appeal,” she said, explaining the process that was involved in creating a sustainable concept for the drinking yoghurt line.
She said the company’s desired end point was a lightweight, sustainable, clear rPET bottle with high shelf appeal, and to achieve this the team had to carry out quite a few product simulations using similar types of substances.
“We also wanted to understand the impact that UV light could have on the kefir yoghurt, and experimented with frosting to see if we could actually get away from UV,” added Holdsworth.
The experiment didn't work and Pact ended up including an additive white colourant to the recycled polymer.
The Collective undertook performance and trial testing to ensure that consumers and brand stakeholders would understand that the new look and weight of the packaging (that was reduced to 27 per cent of its previous weight) wasn't going to cause a production issue. The testing determined the level of recycled content, and allowed for imperfections to be fixed.
The final part of the process was for the product to align with the brand's principles. This was achieved through The Collective's partnership with conservation charity, Trees That Count. With every bottle of kefir probiotic yoghurt purchased, a contribution is made to the charity, to see millions more native trees planted throughout the country.
Pact Group calculates that now The Collective has moved to using recycled plastic in its kefir bottles, 98 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved each year.
“In summary, we're proud to say that recycled resin content will be increased, with The Collective and throughout the group. There are more and more projects which are leaning towards using recycled resin, and The Collective's drinking yoghurt, with 100% rPET, is the first of its kind in this sector,” concluded Holdsworth.
Colgate-Palmolive: Sustainability with a smile
Ted Bailey, packaging sustainability manager, Asia Pacific, Colgate-Palmolive shared the company’s perspective on sustainability, and drilled down to the creation and process of some of the company’s innovative projects and industry relationships.
Bailey began by summarising Colgate-Palmolive’s global and sustainability goals, confirming the company’s intention to include at least 25 per cent of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics in its plastics products.
According to Bailey, 60 per cent of people around the world have Colgate products in their homes, so when 80 per cent of consumers feel strongly that companies should improve health to improve the environment, Colgate listens.
He went on to discuss the measures that can be taken to create both minimal and positive impact on the environment, admitting that recyclable packaging is a journey and that flexible packaging remains a massive challenge for the company, both locally and globally.
Bailey highlighted a recent initiative by the company – the high density polyethylene (HDPE) tube, the first of its kind to be categorised as kerbside recyclable under the Australasian Recycling Label program run by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation.
He explained how Colgate engineers developed The Colgate Smile for Good tube solution, combining different grades and thicknesses of HDPE laminate into a tube that meets recycling standards, while still protecting the product, holding up to the demands of high-speed production, and remaining comfortably squeezable.
“We have a holistic approach and intend to get everybody on board, so we are sharing the tube technology with interested companies and competitors – there's no point being the only company producing recyclable tubes,” said Bailey, adding that future innovations for the company are to reuse models that feed into various environments and provide bespoke solutions.
He also discussed Colgate-Palmolive’s relationships with Ellen MacArthur and Wellman Packaging as well as the impact of Covid on the industry’s supply chain, confirming that the company is looking to shorten some of the supply chains and stating that “Australia has had a unique Covid experience where a lot of manufacturing has maintained and grown – a very different experience to other parts of the world, that have suffered.”
In closing, Bailey invited innovative, sustainable packaging solution providers in the industry to collaborate with Colgate-Palmolive.
Wellman Packaging: Towards e-Zero
Craig Wellman, managing director at Wellman Packaging, discussed recycled plastic for packaging applications and the obstacles the company had faced in bringing this to market.
He kicked off by highlighting Wellman's E-zero sustainability vision, which aims to bring “zero harm to the environment”, and moved on to discuss several projects the company has been involved in.
Wellman said that the project to bring its 100% rPET preforms for bottles at Colgate-Palmolive started at least three years ago with Wellman’s Hong Kong based supply chain team running a global sourcing program, before trialling around 12 different grades and presenting six of them to Colgate.
“In terms of processing, one of the big things that we noticed was the variance in the consistency of temperature stability and crystallinity across the different grades and even within the grade, once you were narrowed down to one particular supplier,” he explained, adding that crystallinity is a big factor when drying PET materials, particularly when the material is dried for up to four hours in elevated temperatures of around 180 degrees.
“When you've got variations in crystallinity you run some risks of basically turning the drying material into a block. So, while that did not actually happen to us, there were warning signs and luckily, it didn't go far enough to cause a massive problem,” Wellman said, pointing out that, “Drying of the resin is mission critical, and increased monitoring of that is significant.”
“And likewise, through the run, we would start out with a relatively clear preform but over the duration find a darkening of colour, which was quite a significant variation,” he added, explaining that the variations were lessened by adapting a two-stage process colour, which proved important in terms of the drying and reheating process.
“Black spotting was also an issue, but it’s not as big an issue as we expected it to be and it certainly depends on the quality of the supplier and who you're working with -- most of our recycled resin is coming out of Martogg in Melbourne,” he said, advising that: “You've got to know your supplier’s supplier to find out where their materials are coming from.”
Wellman also discussed the challenges related to recycled HDPE again noting the lack of these materials and the problems with odour and flavour taint due to the primary source being milk bottles which has obvious implications for food grade applications but also laundry like fabric softener bottles where fragrance is critical.
He then moved on to highlight the rPE Squeezy Sauce bottle which he said is “one of the company’s significant wins this year.”
The innovation for the squeezy bottle, which can now be produced with 100 per cent food grade recycled plastics, came after two years of intensive work by the company, together with its supply partners, to develop the proprietary processes and polymer technologies, and since there wasn’t a test for things like how “squeezy is squeezy”, the company developed one.
Wellman went on to discuss caps and closures, stating that it is more challenging to use recycled content due to the higher complexity in applications like flip-top caps, where they have otherwise had success recently in lightweighting their 55mm cap by around 15% saving 1.6 grams in resin.
In conclusion, he said that working with and sourcing recycled plastics was not straightforward.
“Everyone wants PCR but aside of the depth of the supply chain, several challenges make it an expensive proposition and polymer suppliers need to improve on things like data sheets and sharing information about their resin to avoid processing issues,” he said.
“And again to restate – you've got to know your supplier’s supplier and probably their supplier.”
The 2021 AIP Australasian Packaging mini conference was held on 17-18 August and showcased best-practice and award-winning packaging designs that have been recognised at the Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Awards (PIDAs).
The Women in Packaging Forum, run by PKN Packaging News and Food & Drink Business, in partnership with the AIP, was also held on 18 August. Click here for coverage on the keynote and the panel conversation.
