Closed-loop recycling project for flexible food packaging

Sabic, a glob­al leader in the chem­i­cal indus­try has joined forces with Mars and Land­bell in an advanced recy­cling project designed to close the loop on flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing using cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar polypropy­lene (PP) from the company’s TRUCIRCLE port­fo­lio. In a joint ini­tia­tive with major mar­ket play­ers, biax­i­al­ly ori­ent­ed polypropy­lene (BOPP) film based on SABIC’s cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar PP from feed­stock recy­cling of post-con­sumer, used plas­tics will be intro­duced by Mars in the pack­ag­ing of their KIND® pri­ma­ry healthy snack bar brand.

“We are very excit­ed about this pio­neer­ing closed-loop project that demon­strates the fea­si­bil­i­ty and speed of imple­ment­ing cir­cu­lar plas­tic inno­va­tions when lead­ing actors from across the entire val­ue chain are close­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing,” says Lada Kur­elec, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er PP, PET, PS, PVC, PU & Elas­tomers Busi­ness­es for Petro­chem­i­cals at Sabic. “Used flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing has a high feed­stock val­ue for new mate­ri­als, and our TRUCIRCLE poly­mers and ser­vices form an instru­men­tal ele­ment in tap­ping this vast potential.”

The new mono-mate­r­i­al pack­ag­ing solu­tion con­tin­ues the part­ners’ efforts to sup­port a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my by incor­po­rat­ing advanced recy­cled con­tent in healthy snack bar packaging.

“At Mars, we want to con­tribute to a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my where pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al nev­er becomes waste, but is recy­cled, reused or com­post­ed. For this to hap­pen, we need new solu­tions and infra­struc­ture to change the recy­cling land­scape and to com­ple­ment mechan­i­cal recy­cling,” added Bar­ry Parkin, Chief Pro­cure­ment & Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Offi­cer at Mars. “Today marks anoth­er impor­tant step in accel­er­at­ing our sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing jour­ney and in our col­lab­o­ra­tion with part­ners like Sabic that are enabling new oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide con­sumers with pack­ag­ing designed for circularity.”

“Mixed used plas­tic from flex­i­ble con­sumer pack­ag­ing is dif­fi­cult to sort and recy­cle mechan­i­cal­ly,” adds Uwe Echtel­er, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, for Land­bell Group. “How­ev­er, as demon­strat­ed in this closed-loop project, we can facil­i­tate effec­tive advanced recy­cling solu­tions that allow plas­tics and pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers as well as OEMs and brand own­ers to reclaim and ben­e­fit from the val­ue of mixed used plas­tics while at the same time reduc­ing fos­sil deple­tion and enhanc­ing their car­bon footprint.”

Val­ue Chain Collaboration

The loop starts with the col­lec­tion of mixed used plas­tics coor­di­nat­ed by Land­bell Group, a lead­ing provider of envi­ron­men­tal and chem­i­cal com­pli­ance ser­vices. Land­bell works with Hünd­gen Entsorgung to sort the mixed used plas­tics and deliv­ers the mixed mate­r­i­al to Plas­tic Ener­gy, a glob­al leader in advanced recy­cling tech­nol­o­gy, where it is con­vert­ed to pyrol­y­sis oil in a patent­ed ther­mal anaer­o­bic con­ver­sion process. The pyoil serves as alter­na­tive feed­stock in SABIC’s pro­duc­tion process of vir­gin-qual­i­ty food-con­tact approved PP poly­mer, which is pel­letized and sup­plied to Tagh­leef Indus­tries, a world lead­ing provider of biax­i­al­ly ori­ent­ed PP (BOPP) film.

SIT Group, a key sup­pli­er of high-qual­i­ty print­ed flex­i­ble plas­tic pack­ag­ing to the Euro­pean con­sumer mar­ket, uses the BOPP film man­u­fac­tured by Tagh­leef with Sabic’s cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar poly­mer to cre­ate print­ed BOPP roll-fed pack­ag­ing for KIND brand snack bars and deliv­ers it to Mars, Incor­po­rat­ed, a glob­al leader in con­fec­tionery, food, and pet food prod­ucts. The joint ini­tia­tive will help the part­ners imple­ment their ambi­tious tar­gets of reduc­ing the vol­ume of fos­sil-sourced plas­tics and accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to a more cir­cu­lar plas­tics economy.

Mono-Mate­r­i­al for ease of Recyclability

The new flex­i­ble BOPP pack­ag­ing struc­ture made with cir­cu­lar PP food-grade is anoth­er impor­tant mile­stone towards enabling mono-mate­r­i­al appli­ca­tions that facil­i­tate end-of-life recy­cling in exist­ing col­lec­tion and con­ver­sion streams with­out com­pro­mis­ing on qual­i­ty or ease of pro­cess­ing. Mars has already incor­po­rat­ed cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar PP poly­mer from Sabic’s TRUCIRCLE port­fo­lio in the pri­ma­ry pack­ag­ing of some of its pop­u­lar wet pet food brand SHEBA. After suc­cess­ful pilot­ing, the cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar PP food-grade will now be intro­duced into the KIND snack bar wrap as part of the group’s plans to increase its vol­umes of recy­cle con­tent also in oth­er brand prod­ucts packaging.

Sabic’s cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar PP poly­mer is ver­i­fied and authen­ti­cat­ed in a mass bal­anc­ing approach under the Inter­na­tion­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Car­bon Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (ISCC) PLUS scheme. The cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar prod­ucts from the supplier’s TRUCIRCLE port­fo­lio offer a car­bon foot­print reduc­tion in the range of 2 kilo­grams of CO2 per each kilo­gram of poly­mer pro­duced based on the diver­sion of post-con­sumer used plas­tic from incineration.