Page 18 - Packaging News Magazine Nov-Dec2020

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SUSTAINABILITY www.packagingnews.com.au | November–December 2020
Sustainability roundup
The past two months have seen many developments in the sustainability space. Here are some of the most exciting ideas to come through the PKN newsroom.
NESTLÉ AND IQ RENEW LAUNCH SOFT PLASTIC RECYCLING TRIAL
AMCOR JOINS SEARCH FOR RECYCLING HOLY GRAIL 2.0
Amcor has joined the Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0, which brings together more than 85 companies and organisations across the packaging value chain, including key customers
and industry peers.
Other major companies
involved in the project include the Coca-Cola Company, Constantia Flexibles, Danone, Dow, General Mills, GS1 in Europe, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Mondelez, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Tetra Pak, and many more.
HolyGrail 2.0 is a pilot project facilitated by AIM, the European Brands Association. It aims to prove the viability of digital watermarking technologies for accurate sorting and, conse- quently, higher-quality recycling.
The project also aims to demonstrate the business case for digital watermarking at scale. It builds on initial research by Amcor’s partner, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, into innovations to improve post- consumer recycling.
Nestlé and Australian recycler iQ Renew are taking the next steps in a trial that will see soft plastics collected through kerbside recycling. The trial will commence with 2000 households on the NSW Central Coast. There are plans to extend it later to some 140,000 homes.
The trial aims to find ways to collect household soft plastic and turn it into a resource.
Participating households will collect their clean soft plastics in a purpose-made bright yellow Curby bag. When the bag is full, consumers can tie it up, tag it and place it in their yellow recycling bin for pick up with their regular recycling collection.
Tags will identify the bags and help to improve the sorting process. The soft plastics will then be shredded and become a resource for use in other plastic prod- ucts, chemical recycling,
and energy recovery.
Danial Gallagher, iQ Renew CEO said
the trial aimed to test how collecting and processing soft plastics can be scaled up.
“We are delighted to partner with Nestlé and launch the Curby soft plastic recovery solution on the Central Coast,” he said.
Nestlé Australia CEO Sandra Martinez said the company wanted to be part of finding new approaches to boosting recycling soft plastic packaging.
“While Nestlé wants to reduce its use of virgin plastics and increase our use of recycled packaging, this won’t happen with- out robust collection, sorting and process- ing systems,” she said.
Central Coast Council’s director roads transport and drainage Boris Bolgoff said the council is excited to be piloting new ways to recover soft plastics, using existing services and facilities at no additional cost.
“Right now more than half of Central Coast residents’ household waste is sent to landfill, with soft plastics being common due to difficulties in separating it from other types of waste and recyclables and limited markets for the product,” Bolgoff said.
The Curby system is personified in its mascot: “Curby, the planet’s friendly bilby” featuring on the yellow bags.