Page 16 - Packaging News Magazine Sep-Oct 2021

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SUSTAINABILITY | www.packagingnews.com.au | September-October 2021
Wellman Packaging: Towards
At the recent AIP conference, Craig Wellman, CEO at Wellman Packaging, spoke on the use of recycled plastic for packaging applications and the challenges the company has faced in bringing this to market. Colleen Bate reports.
for up to four hours in elevated temperatures of around 180
degrees.
“When you've got variations in
crystallinity you run some risks of basically turning the drying material into a block. So, while that did not actually happen to us, there were warning signs and luckily, it didn't go far enough to cause a massive problem,” Wellman said, pointing out that, “Drying of the resin is mission critical, and increased monitoring of that
is significant.”
“And likewise, through the
run, we would start out with a relatively clear preform but over the duration find a dark- ening of colour, which was quite a significant variation,” he added, explaining that the
ELLMAN Packaging’s E-zero sustainability vision, which aims to bring “zero harm to the environment”, is driving the development of the com- pany’s advanced environ- mentally conscious manu-
facturing platform for fast moving consumer goods. And a key pillar of this platform is the use of recycled content in packaging.
Speaking at the conference in August, Wellman said that the proj- ect to bring to market its 100% rPET preforms for bottles for Colgate- Palmolive started at least three years
ago with Wellman’s Hong Kong based supply chain team running a global sourcing program, before trialling around 12 different grades and pre- senting six of them to Colgate.
“In terms of processing, one of the big things that we noticed was the variance in the consistency of temperature stability and crystal- linity across the different grades and even within the grade, once you were narrowed down to one particular supplier,” he explained, adding that crystallinity is a big fac- tor when drying PET materials, par- ticularly when the material is dried
Solution for ‘escaped’ plastic
Twelve8 Technology’s new PaktoEarth eco-plastic packaging material is recyclable but will also decompose in natural conditions if the packaging ends up in landfill or if left out in the environment.
Harrison explains that RAWS- tech can be used for PP, PE, HDPE and LDPE in flexible and rigid (up to 10mm) plastic packaging for a wide range of applications.
“We’re working on PET and other plastic, however, this is some time away,” Harrison says.
The company can supply Pak- toEarth products as masterbatch pellets to be blended at 1 per cent (sometimes slightly higher depend- ing on the end-user product); as film; as blended pellets with virgin and/or recycled plastic; as end-user products in production (eg, existing moulds); and as customised end- user products.
“There is no disruption to the manufacturing process or need for specialised or high-cost machinery to use PaktoEarth,” he says.
The patented RAWS-tech has been tested on a range of products, and certified under the international standards for biodegradable plas- tics: ASTM 6954 and GBT20197. ■
WHILE the packaging industry continues to invest in recy- cling infrastructure and works to find a fully circu- lar solution for plastic waste across all material types, Twelve8’s PaktoEarth tech-
nology is positioned as a solution for the large amount of plastic packaging that still ends up in landfill or pollut- ing the environment.
Twelve8 co-founder and CEO Anthony Harrison says PaktoEarth contains a pro-degradant built-in time-controlled additive – RAWS-tech – containing a patent pending formula that is added to plastic so that it can break down to a Ketone, which scien- tifically is no longer plastic, leaving no micro-plastics with “zero waste”.
“Our breakdown effectiveness means our packaging breaks down
to air [CO2], water and less than one per cent biomass, with zero waste.”
Harrison says there is no industrial or commercial treatment required for the material to naturally decompose. It has been tested and approved to start decomposing at 24 degrees (16 degrees in the lab) and does not require UV light but can rely on thermal decom- position in the absence of light.
“This is an eco-insurance policy tak- ing care of plastic that escapes the recy- cling circle and ends up in landfill or left behind in the environment.”
This is an eco-insurance policy taking care of plastic that escapes the recycling circle...”