UK – Multinational packaging company, Greiner Packaging UK & Ireland (GPUK) is joining Recoup to secure circular and practical solutions for plastic resources in the UK and worldwide.
Recoup’s aim is to help improve plastic recycling levels, ensure plastic uses resources efficiently, and protect the environment.
While these aims are unchanged, Stuart Foster, CEO at Recoup, adds that “requirements and expectations have changed a great deal over three decades, from producer responsibility to the circular economy.”
Foster elaborates that: “GPUK wishes to provide its customers with the reassurance that they can avoid the dangers of greenwashing by adopting packaging which measurably improves their carbon footprint and sustainability position.
“With so much opinion around environmental and plastic issues,” he says, “Recoup’s work continues to be based on evidence, research and facts with unbiased integrity.
He added: “As an organization, Recoup helps demonstrate accountability and transparency, through an independent lens.”
The process was led by Rachel Sheldon, who was recently appointed Sustainability and Innovation Manager of GPUK.
She explains that after working in customer-facing roles for more than a decade, she understands what companies want and need to know about the environmental sustainability of their packaging choices.
“Delivering the most [environmentally] sustainable solutions and properly explaining their benefits and advantages is essential,” she says.
Sheldon is “currently looking to gain more and better data around CO2 reduction through life cycle assessments of all our products.”
Regarding the company’s carbon emissions, Sheldon said: “GPUK has developed solutions which reduce CO2 emissions by optimizing the packaging, in line with its Design for Recycling guidelines.”
“Its K3 cardboard-plastic solution, for example, is one of the most sustainable packaging solutions on the market, with a carbon footprint that is significantly smaller than that of alternative packaging solutions.”
Speaking at Packaging Innovations 2022, Sheldon and sales and marketing director Julie Eller demonstrated how the new K3 r100 cup cardboard-plastic cup can be easily separated for recycling.
Looking to the future, Sheldon says that GPUK remains committed to the HolyGrail 2.0 digital watermarks initiative.
The goal of the initiative is to prove that digital watermarking technologies can be used for the accurate sorting of post-consumer packaging waste on a large scale.
“GPUK is actively investigating more and better data around CO2 reduction through life cycle assessments of all its products. Being able to benchmark against others through membership of Recoup makes a significant contribution,” she concludes.
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