Research Task

London Bio Packaging

 14 million ready meals consumed at Olympics

B.     8,500 tonnes expected waste to landfill

C.     120 million pieces of packaging supplied,  all responsibly made, all responsibly disposed of.

D.     5 stages in the closed loop system,  supply, dispose, collect, process and re-use.

E.     Bio Plastics are made from plants. They behave in a similar way to conventional plastics and are suitable for most packaging applications.

F.     PSM – plant starch material is a flexible bio based packaging material, which has not been refined into a bio-plastic. It is made from renewable crops like corn or potatoes.

G.     Sugar Bagasse is the waste material produced once sugar cane has been harvested for the sugar syrup is called bagasse. This fibrous material is a renewable source.

H.    Recycles plastic rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) is the most common plastic that is being recycled back into primary applications (i.e. bottles recycled back into bottles and not down cycled into lesser products like park furniture.

Wrap

A.     Wraps work helps people recycle more and waste less, both at home and work, and offers economic as well as environmental benefits.

B.     Design for re-use considerations – consumers willingness to return used packaging, needs to be made simple to fit into everyday life. Design must be robust enough for re-use. Ensure that facilities for cleaning, repair or reconditioning are available if this is necessary before the packaging can be re-used.

C.     Design for recycling considerations – try to avoid materials, combinations of materials or designs of packaging that might create problems in collecting, sorting and recycling. Construct your packaging so that the end-user can easily separate any components that should not go into recycling. Design packaging so that minimum product residues remain when the used package is collected for recycling.

D.    Metal – high recycled content, this has no effect on functional performance. Glass – has high recycled content, this has no effect on functional performance. Paper and board – packaging for non-food contact contains high levels of recycled content, however this may be heavier that packaging made from virgin fibers  Plastics - has seldom contained recycled content mainly for safety reasons, especially for food contact applications. However, technology has moved on and it is now possible to use some recycled plastics for food packaging. This is a fast-moving area and it is worth checking with reprocessors, WRAP and the British Plastics Federation to find out what’s available.