When people hear about plastic packaging, they often think about trash. No wonder, since the oceans are filled with floating waste. Big agglomerations like Paris, for example, also face huge garbage problems every week. The environment suffers from that deeply. Can manufacturing packaging change this situation? Can it be more green? In this article, we will cover the subject.
The basics of the Circular Economy model
What is Circular Economy? It is an idea that allows various businesses to look at waste as a source of raw materials. Once used and thrown away by a consumer, a piece of trash can serve at least a few times more in order to produce something new. As far as manufacturing packaging is concerned, the Circular Economy is a key to a gold mine.
Business owners and managers, who embraced this idea, started a brand-new path for the whole industry. The implementation of Circular Economy models reduces not only waste in the environment, but also the costs of production processes. How? Well, trash is cheaper than original raw materials. Furthermore, a modern packaging factory can benefit from its own waste that would be useless otherwise. The green philosophy also provides more profit because eco-friendly products sell better these days.
Regranulation of packaging materials
Green ways for manufacturing packaging require innovation. The plastic itself must have certain properties if it is to be a part of this system. The benefits of the Circular Economy can be gained only with packaging solutions that can undergo processes like regranulation. What is regranulation?
As the name suggests, it allows packaging manufacturers to produce new granules from an old product. A single plastic container is decomposed to its basic elements, which are used to make a broad range of products afterwards. For that to work, the raw material must be melted. Sophisticated packaging machines are based on various types of in-mold technologies, so they can form any shape from the scratch. That’s how common trash becomes a clean, fresh product that is back into the circulation.
Regranulation should allow the cycle to be repeated multiple times. Polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) are the most common types of plastics that fit the requirements. Today, however, there is a limit of cycles possible because the granules lose their properties after a while. As a result, product damage standards are changed, and so is its general functionality. Yet the packaging industry is constantly upgrading regranulation mechanisms as well as the raw materials themselves. The goal is to increase the number of cycles. Who knows, soon it may become infinite.
Manufacturing packaging from PCR plastics
The benefits of Post-Consumer Recycled plastics seem obvious. For manufacturing packaging solutions, the PCR materials provide opportunities to clean our planet and the reputation of plastic packaging. Today, if the Circular Economy standards are in place fully, an ordinary shampoo bottle can contain up to 95% of PCR in its composition. But the modernization of infrastructure and some molecular improvements within the plastic itself can help with achieving even better results.
The production of the packaging equipment is quite green, don’t you agree? But it is fair to say that all of this wouldn’t be possible without consumer awareness. The usage of PCR plastics appeals to them. If the manufacturing of packaging products includes PCR, a shampoo or food company usually emphasizes that fact on labels. Environmentally conscious people are keen to buy such products more often. They also take a bit of pride in it. Therefore, the business shade of green empowers the manufacturing of eco-friendly packaging for the market worldwide.
Will there be more plastic in the future?
The green trends in the packaging business indicate that the production of plastic bottles, containers or canisters will continue to grow. But this is not a concern, since the application of Circular Economy ideas will make it all totally recyclable eventually. Even if there will be more plastic around us, it will not generate more trash – quite contrary.
Additionally, the demand for good quality plastics grows far beyond cosmetics or food containers. 3D printers are more common, and they already produce elements for complicated structures. In the nearby future, we should expect that sophisticated, lightweight and strong plastics might entirely replace metals and other materials in many industries. But all of that will be green. It will be easy to recycle many times over. For now, however, manufacturing packaging seems to follow these trends most rigorously. We should be grateful for that.
A modern manufacturer of packaging plays quite a role in saving our planet from the plastic waste. Thanks to the green trends, typical water bottles can actually clean the oceans. Unfortunately, that takes effort. That takes time. But you know what? We’re closer than most people think.
