Application News
Application News Compostable packaging for Christmas food Selfridges, a department store chain headquartered in London, UK, is switching the packaging of their house brand Christmas food (90,000 mince pies & 3,000 Christmas cakes) from conventional plastics to the home compostable alternative NatureFlex. Packaging like trays, bags and product windows will be made with recyclable cardboard and a home compostable cellulose based film, making them 100 % (conventional) plastic-free. Futamura’s NatureFlex is made in Cumbria (UK) from responsibly sourced wood pulp, has the aesthetics of conventional plastics, but decomposts in eight to ten weeks in a home compost environment. The cellulose based film has been certified by both the European (EN13432) and American (ASTM D6400) norms for industrially compostable packaging. The material has additionally received the TÜV Austria OK Compost Home certification for home composting. This is made visible to the consumer via a sticker stating that the packaging can be composted together with food waste. Selfridges change in packaging follows consumers’ demands for more environmentally responsible packaging shown in a recent survey. 82% of consumers are concerned about the impacts of plastic food packaging, while 56% take the impact of packaging into consideration when buying Christmas food (based on a YouGov poll of over 2,100 UK consumers). Selfridge has further plans to use NatureFlex for a selection of its all-year-round biscuits and cakes. AT www.selfridges.com Green neoprene alternative Hyperflex, Millville, New Jersey, USA (Henderson Sports Group), is excited to introduce a sustainable alternative to conventional neoprene wetsuits. Greenprene ® a 100 % neoprene free sustainable insulating foam. It is formulated from deproteinized natural rubber based insulating foam along with other natural additives such as sugar cane to add stretch, plant oils and oyster shells to provide strength, as Joe Polak of Henderson Wetsuits told bioplastics MAGAZINE. “The rest is being held in confidence as a lot of our competitors are now trying to learn more about Greenprene,” Joe added. The result is a bio based insulating foam that is ultra-soft, stretchy, durable and lightweight. It has been tested and is approved by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bio Preferred ® program as a USDA Biobased product. The fabric lamination is mainly sourced from recycled material. The exterior fabric laminate (AQUA-SILK) is made from (88 % recycled polyester and 12 % spandex). While the interior fabric laminate (BIO-SPAN) is made from (88 % recycled polyester and 12 % Nylon), both have been tested AZO-free and are Oeko-tex certified. (Photo courtesy Henderson Divewear) The entire Greenprene wetsuit program has been designed to provide a fully sustainable product lifecycle. From recycled material in packaging to hangtags and the use of soy based inks. AT www.hyperflexusa.com/greenprene Magnetic for Plastics www.plasticker.com • International Trade in Raw Materials, Machinery & Products Free of Charge. • Daily News from the Industrial Sector and the Plastics Markets. • Current Market Prices for Plastics. • Buyer’s Guide for Plastics & Additives, Machinery & Equipment, Subcontractors and Services. • Job Market for Specialists and Executive Staff in the Plastics Industry. Up-to-date • Fast • Professional 28 bioplastics MAGAZINE [06/19] Vol. 14
Application News Zero waste coffee capsules Flo SpA, (Parma, Italy) announced on October 23 rd the introduction of three new capsule formats in their GEA family. The capsules are industrially compostable, fully biobased, and able to provide a brewing experience that is expected of the most popular capsules on the market. Building on the success and adoption of the GEA compostable version for the A Modo Mio system, Flo again partnered with NatureWorks (Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA) to develop new GEA capsules suitable for Nespresso, Lavazza Blue, and Keurig systems. The GEA capsules are all made with Ingeo, a renewably sourced PLA material from NatureWorks that can be used for all parts of a coffee capsule from lidding to filters to the capsule body. “Coffee capsules are complex products and creating a compostable, high performing solution required significant investment and expertise,’’ explains Erika Simonazzi, Marketing Manager of Flo. Using two newly opened cuttingedge laboratories all GEA capsules have been tuned to achieve the ideal pressure needed to deliver a coffee from every capsule that is perfectly brewed for maximum taste, crema, and aroma. New data also demonstrates that the GEA capsules deliver excellent oxygen barrier, material ageing stability, and shelflife all in a biobased, industrially compostable format. Recent testing with Accademia Italiana Maestri del Caffè (AICAF), Calcinato, Italy, has also verified that the GEA capsules maintain the flavor and aroma of the coffee for over 11 months with testing still ongoing. This type of performance meets the needs of the most demanding coffee roasters and consumers. “Sustainability has always been one of the top items in any coffee roaster’s agenda,” explains Flavio Di Marcotullio, Global Industry Leader at NatureWorks. “We are delighted to observe how the coffee industry is now fully embracing industrial compostability as the preferred recovery option for coffee capsules. Today roasters finally have access to a capsule that not only is certified compostable, biobased, and food-contact approved, but also has demonstrated measurable performance that allows consumers to brew the perfect coffee at home.”AT www.flo.eu PLA champagne glasses At the Düsseldorf K Show injection moulding machiney producer Nissei (Sakaki, Japan) presented among other things, longstemmed PLA champagne glasses, representing both an eco-friendly and a technological innovation. Among the drawbacks of PLA is its low shock resistance, poor fluidity - leading to short flow paths - and poor mould releasability. This makes it difficult to process and limits its applications in deep or thin-wall parts. In response to new legislation – in the form of, for example, a French law requiring all disposable tableware to be made from 50 % or more biologically-sourced compostable materials by the year 2020 – Nissei developed practical thinwall container moulding technologies that would enable the replacement of conventional disposable containers with containers made of 100 % PLA. The technology involved mixing supercritical carbon dioxide into the molten PLA to improve the fluidity of injected material. This made it possible to produce highly transparent injection moulded thin-wall PLA containers with wall thicknesses of 0.65 mm. MT www.nisseiplastic.com World’s first CO 2 -neutral synthetic football turf In the LigaTurf Cross GT synthetic turf, Polytan (Burgheim, Germany) has presented the first CO 2 -neutral synthetic football turf in the world at this year’s FSB (International Trade Fair for Public Space, Sports and Leisure Facilities, end of October 2019, Cologne, Germany). It is a refinement of the successful LigaTurf Cross turf in which smooth and crimped fibres were combined for the first time. Like the Poligras Tokyo GT hockey turf, it is made from the biobased I’m green polyethylene plastic from Braskem: obtained from renewable raw materials, this plastic accounts for 60 % of the base material for the filaments. The sustainable raw material has the same good properties as the original, crude oil-based polyethylene. Many hockey pitches are already equipped with it, including the Sparkassenpark Mönchengladbach and the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre in England. The already excellent eco-balance is boosted even further by the switchover of production to 100 % green electricity and the optimised manufacture of the back coating of the synthetic turf. Elastic layers form the basis of modern synthetic turf systems from Polytan, which retain their consistently high elasticity for more than 30 years. They are made from recycled elastic materials. The innovative PolyBase GT product has been made even more sustainable by the use of a new binder from Covestro, the manufacture of which uses carbon dioxide as the raw material, saving on fossil resources such as crude oil. MT www.polytan.com bioplastics MAGAZINE [06/19] Vol. 14 29
