PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY: Recycling revisited

Sally Easton MW reviews the latest packaging innovations and explores the actualities of recyclying  alternative packs. Real progress has been made in the last year

Consumers prefer glass bottles. And according to research  by Wine Intelligence, 65% of British people believe glass is an environmentally friendly form of wine packaging; more than for any other type of drinks packaging.

As part of the drive to damage the environment less, we’re all familiar with glass lightweighting, which retains the consumers’ so-far unchallenged favourite packaging.  Wrap’s (Waste and Resources Action Programme) work has focused on reducing carbon emissions from the difference in shipments in bulk versus bottled product, and its success is widely reported.  

But a study by Reh Kendermann has shown it may be more sustainable to bulk ship to Germany, bottle there, then ship on to the UK. Its research looked not just at carbon emissions, but also how much recycled glass was used, eg, 34% on average in the UK, versus 90% for green bottles at Reh Kendermann, and energy sources – the UK average is just 4% renewable energy, and RK uses 16%. The firm’s export sales director, Alison Flemming MW, says: “There are obvious savings to be made when not bottling at source for New World wines, but perhaps it is not so well known that Germany has a distinct advantage in terms of reduced carbon emissions thanks to using the Rhine for transportation, as well as more effective, renewable energy use. We work with a number of partners in the UK and around the world on this basis.”

Can do
Rexam, makers of cans, have been busy. They’re responsible for all the recent launches onto the UK market – Wild Pelican, Elkan, Black Tower, as well as some Prosecco brands. John Revess, marketing director, comments: “Consumer research showed young female consumers in England find the concept and product delivery of wine in a can appealing.  It’s light, it’s practical, it’s non-masculine. For sparkling white, why open a whole bottle, when you have the correct serving size.”  

He goes on to add: “With the number of single households increasing, single-serve wines in 187 and 200ml are convenient. And cans are the most recycled drinks container in the world.”

The 18.75cl/20cl slim-line Rexam cans are well differentiated from a beer or carbonated soft drink can. But it is the Rexam fusion bottle that has been making waves recently. Breakthrough innovation manager Stephen Howell reports: “Fusion can is new for the industry. We wanted to create a brand for the bottle, rather than create another can. We’ve fused standing can manufacture with a unique necking facility to produce something new and dynamic. It’s taken about four years in development and more than e4m in a pilot plant.”

Howell said there’s no reason not to use this for wine as well as other products. Only in May was the pilot plant opened, with the aim for full commercialisation by the end of 2009. Clearly the impetus for wine in a can could not wait that long.  As though predicting success, a 75cl fusion bottle is already on the drawing board.

On the technical side, as with bag-in-box and composite cartons, an internal food-grade barrier lining is required to prevent metal pick-up by the wine. This is the same coating used for other drinks, just thicker for wine. And on the oxygen front, still wines are dosed with liquid nitrogen which expands and pushes out the headspace oxygen immediately prior to sealing on the lid. It also gives a rigid feel to the filled pack.  

Yvon Mau’s new brand, Jolie Terre, has overcome the squat PET bottle as “wine-stubbies” equivalent, with an elegant, slim PET bottle, which is just as tall as its glass bottle equivalent. Technology is key here too. CEO Philippe Laqueche says: “We are using a single-layer barrier which has been improved, and we will use a [further improved] multi-layer barrier later this year.”

Perfectly proportioned?
Wine cans of 20cl for sparkling and 18.75cl for still fit the single serve idea perfectly. To this end, The Company of Wine People has brought out a 25cl pouch pack for Arniston Bay, following on from the success of the 1.5 litre pouch last year. The company’s brand and trade marketing manager, Felicity Billington, says: “We launched the 250ml this year to broaden the appeal to a different sector. 250ml is more for the convenience sector, for travel and events, festivals and sporting events where you can’t take glass into arenas; for catering and airlines. It’s much lighter to carry and it’s flat once empty, so less weight and space is used on board.” She adds that women especially are interested in the concept.

Of the three Rs – not reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, but reduce, re-use and recycle – a lot of energy has been invested in the first R, with lightweight packs of all descriptions.

Pouches and composite cartons such as Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopak are evidently single use, but the re-use of glass drinks bottles is not currently on the agenda. A reversion to the 1970s deposit system would certainly remove the high level of energy required to re-melt glass cullet to make new glass bottles, but it’s not so simple, said Rebecca Cocking, recycling manager at British Glass: “Returnables are heavier, they have to be designed to go through up to 12 washes. The collection, transport and distribution and wash side also needs to be considered. There’s not necessarily a saving to transport empty bottles to a filling point.”

Despite this issue of energy-intensive production for, among others, glass containers, Cocking argues: “Our raw materials are abundant, they’re readily available in the UK. If you do a life cycle assessment, such as WRAP’s glass versus PET, the carbon footprint is not that different. Glass is indefinitely recyclable, and it doesn’t lose purity from the closed loop.” Closed loop recycling is where a glass container is recycled into a glass container, for example. But it occurs only where glass colours are kept separate, so mixed kerbside collections, which meet Local Authorities weight-based packaging reduction targets, do little to promote the best practice of closed loop recycling.  

Plastic fantastic
It is plastics recycling that has come on in leaps and bounds in recent months, especially for composite cartons. Up until recently, says Andy Dawe, WRAP’s head of retail programmes,  “Even though PE (polyethylene), HDPE (high density polyethylene), and PET are recyclable, they tend to end up in landfill because there is nowhere to recycle them. But in the last few years, local authorities have put in the infrastructure for HDPE and PET bottles. Over 90% of LAs now have plastic bottle collection facilities.”

And some plastics fit well the closed loop model. Dawe continues: “PET/HDPE can now be put into the closed loop recycling system. About half a dozen new plants are under construction in the UK to process material. Empty bottles currently go to Europe, are processed, and plastic pellets come back into the UK for re-use. “

Recycling of composite cartons has long been an issue. The need to separate the card from the plastic from the metal creates challenges, and even up to the end of 2007, composite cartons were one of the “recyclable” materials that couldn’t be recycled in the UK. Germany though, manages to recycle 65-70% of its cartons.

However, says Richard Hands, chairman of ACE UK, the trade association for composite cartons, “A huge amount has happened on collection. We had a little collection a year ago. Now 83% of LAs have carton collections, run by the carton industry. We have used a paper mill in Sweden which was extracting the cardboard for plasterboard liner, and recovering the plastic and aluminium as energy to power the mill. We’re expecting to shift to a mill in Norway which has a fully recycling solution,” and which uses a high proportion of renewable energy. This, he said, more than offsets the transport costs from the UK in terms of life cycle impacts.
 
Sustainable consumption
Without comprehensive life cycle assessments which consider not just carbon footprints, but also wider sustainability issues, it is difficult to gauge the relative merits of one system/product over another, and decisions are never linear.

The Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester was set up last year, funded by Tesco, to look at some of the challenges. The SCI is undertaking academic carbon footprint studies on different types of drinks packaging – looking at industry averages for various types of packaging. Professor of sustainable chemical engineering, Adisa Azapagic, is leading this research. She says: “We’ve concentrated on the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the six
main gases. Other sustainability aspects we are looking at include environmental impacts such as acidification, ozone layer depletion and eutrophication. But economic and social aspects are not included.

“The questions are very complex. This is an industry average study,” Azapagic says, “you can come to opposite answers depending on what specific issues you took into account. When we do the specific pack analyses, the results could
be different.

“And you can’t base decisions on one criterion. Image is important. If, for example, whisky manufacturers could be persuaded to bottle in green glass, we wouldn’t have a surplus of green glass in this country.  

In the end, consumers will decide their preferred packaging, and carbon footprints or wider sustainability and recycling issues may form only part of our buying behaviour. Glass remains the favourite and it’s the only pack that’s fully inert, not requiring internal coatings. But, as with the screwcap initiative, industry is driving the innovation and watching what consumers like.

db © July 2008