V-Shapes introduces mechanically-recyclable plastic sachets for food packaging
ITALY – Food, cosmetic, medical pharma, and chemical packaging services company, V-shapes has launched fully recyclable PP sachets with high-barrier capability at ProPak Asia 2022.
V-Shapes has designed a brand-new type of high-barrier substrate that has been certified by Interseroh as recyclable, with extremely high ratings by this well-known certification organization.
The new substrates, reNEW oX-100 and reNEW oX-500, consist of a sheet of polypropylene copolymers with a high-performance barrier. The sachets are designed to be detected, sorted, and recycled in the industrial waste stream.
The company explains that the solutions do not add PP or PET to the recycling stream which would downgrade their recyclability, as is the case with other barrier materials, because they are mono-polymer constructions. This construction makes them widely recyclable worldwide.
The new solutions also maintain the same size and weight as other recyclable materials used by V-Shapes.
The reNew-oX materials are available in several widths, ranging from 70 to 340 mm, and suitable for the company’s Prime and Alpha machines, from one to six production lanes.
These new materials reflect the 4R concept – reduce, return, recycle, reward – a critical element of any environmental sustainability initiative, highlights V-Shapes.
They are also available for use with new and installed V-Shapes single-dose packaging machines.
Besides the recyclability, this packaging even brings more positive impacts in terms of sustainability through the use of thin, recyclable films.
According to Innova Market Insights “Monomaterial Mastery” highlights the transition away from hard-to-recycle, multilayer packaging to mono-material solutions that are recyclable through existing infrastructure.
Trends toward mono-material packaging have increased, especially in Europe, with CEFLEX Consortium (Circular Economic for Flexible Packaging) and more than a hundred stakeholders in the packaging value chain (CEFLEX, n.d.).
The organization has launched a series of voluntary guidelines denominated “Designing for a Circular Economic (D4ACE)”, aiming to help current systems to recycle flexible packaging (CEFLEX, 2020).
Design for recycling includes the maximization of recyclable components in the structures, avoidance of hazardous materials or non-recyclables, and reduction of complexity, among other efforts to increase recyclability (Maris et al., 2018).
The continent’s plastic packaging represents 39,6% of the plastic demand, while a great part of that becomes waste just after the use according to Plastics Europe, 2020.
The EU Plastics Strategy requires all packaging to be recyclable or reusable in an economically viable way by 2030.
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