Innovations in Plastics for Packaging
On Saturday 26th April John James, Export Manager of Wells Plastics (Leftmost of Photograph) gave a presentation entitled “Plastic flexible packaging waste management – a cost effective solution” at a one day conference “Innovations in Plastics for Packaging” organised by the Indian Institute of Packaging in Mumbai, India. In India and elsewhere, flexible laminates are often the optimum packaging for many food and non-food products (like Chips, Snack Foods, Biscuits, Confectionery, Tea, Sugar, Rice, Edible Oil, Milk, Baby food, Shampoo, Auto Spares etc.). However, the widespread usage of flexible plastic packaging and the litter resulting from its careless disposal, and the absence of an effective collection and plastic waste management system, have all together made plastic packaging the a major issue in India. Since currently, most plastic packaging is non-biodegradable and non-recyclable, careless disposal of post-consumer packaging waste creates a tremendous amount of litter, which can last for many years in the environment. This problem is also common in many Asian, African and other countries too. Therefore, tackling the issue of plastic packaging litter should be an important issue for FMCG companies, State Government, Central Government, Government bodies and NGOs. ReverteTM has been used in many PE and PP applications for many years and now, after completing 3 years of development work, Wells Plastics is offering a new grade of ReverteTM for PET film. Since most of flexible plastic packaging in India has a layer of PET or MET PET film, this new development is expected to revolutionise the fight against flexible plastic packaging litter in the country and beyond. Recently, Wells has completed testing of multilayer laminates made of PET, BOPP, MET PET, MET BOPP, PE films incorporation Reverte™ in all the layers and it has now been well proven that multilayer films/packaging produced with ReverteTM will oxo-biodegrade in the open environment. Multilayer laminates made of films incorporation Reverte™ in all the layers have been tested and are found to give adequate shelf life, even when the packaged products are displayed in the sun. Some major PET and BOPP film manufacturers in India have successfully produced Oxo-biodegradable BOPP, MET BOPP, PET and MET PET using ReverteTM. The event was attended by 220 people comprising of those involved in plastics packaging manufacturing, converters and end users, and Reverte™ was high profile at the event and in both the brochure and technical souvenir which people took away with them.
“Innovations in Plastics for Packaging” organised by the Indian Institute of Packaging in Mumbai, India. May 2014