Page 19 - Packaging News Mar-Apr 2020

March-April 2020 | www.packagingnews.com.au
| SUSTAINABILITY 19
“You get sustainability, aesthetics, and new business models, while new func- tions are enabled,” he says.
“There is so much cool stuff that has nothing to do with sustainability that is only enabled because of reuse,” he says.
THE CARBON ANGLE
Loop is not a silver bullet for carbon emis- sions, Szaky says. But there are benefits if the packages are reused a repeatedly.
“Every time you buy a new shampoo bottle, for example, it has the same impact over and over, because there is no effi- ciency on the second, third, fourth time you buy a new bottle of shampoo,” he says.
“An aluminium bottle will absolutely
ABOVE: Loop aims to jumpstart the circular economy.
ABOVE RIGHT: The idea is to make consumer goods packaging cool and durable.
OPPOSITE: Tom Szaky, TerraCycle CEO.
have higher carbon impact on the first use, no question. It’s an aluminium bottle versus, say, an HDPE bottle. On the sec- ond use, you’re not making a new bottle, you’re not melting it down or anything, so the impact goes down, then down again on the next use. What happens is you get a curve. And the curve gets closer to asymptote, the package divides out to effectively nothing. What you have left is
the carbon cost of transportation plus cleaning. At some point, even if you have a massively impactful package, a big number divides another big number down to nothing.”
This is the reason behind the minimum use for each package being 10 uses, Szaky says. “While 10 is an arbitrary number, we can be relatively sure the pack divides out by then, as the drop is exceptionally big in the first few uses,” he says.
Loop is looking towards the era of the milkman for a more sustainable future. It is a simple idea, but, combined with the energy of modern entrepreneurship it may just change the packaging industry for the greener. ■
Want to add zip to the package on your FFS or Flow Wrapper? Zip-Pak is doing this with cost-effective retrofits.
CONTACT US TO MAKE YOUR PACKAGE RESEALABLE
1/77-89 Remington Drive, Dandenong South, Vic 3175
+61 (03) 8795 8299 | salesausnz@zippak.com | www.zippak.com
Filling
Rotary Turret
Heat Seal U
Cross seal jaws and knife
Upper jaw sealing of zipper
Zipper sealed to both sides of pack
Film Web
Zipper Reel
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Form Shou
Back Seale
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End Crushing Unit
Film Direction