Entec Innovative Packaging | Sustainability in Single Serve Food Packages
Innovative sustainability solutions for the growing single serve food market. Re-engineering polymers in packaging for friendly recycling.
Environmentally friendly food packaging continues to grow in demand where consumers and media put pressure and responsibility on producers to develop alternative packages that are 100% recyclable, where current Polyethylene Bag and film recovery are present in the community. Single serve food packaging is a large part of this market and continues to grow in popularity where consumers are demanding their favorite snacks or quick meals to be packaged for single use consumption.
Many of these packaging designs contain polymers that are not recycle friendly or compatible with mainstream polymers such as Polyethylene or Polypropylene. Some of the packaging designs are also constructed in a complex way where separation of recyclable “friendly” olefins and non-recyclable “unfriendly” materials is next to impossible, so the entire package ends up in the landfill.
Entec business development and packaging engineers work with our customers to identify alternate materials and packaging designs where the new package is 100% recyclable or contains less “un-friendly” materials. Entec’s supply partners cover almost all types and grades of polymers which often results in multiple solutions for a single application. Stand up single use pouches where PE sealant films laminated to PET is one example where the PET material and adhesive can be eliminated from the design and substituted with a blown film grade engineered polymer with the same stiffness and clarity as PET, where you do not need the barrier properties of the PET. The all Polyolefin pouch also provides improved tear for easy opening, and higher puncture strength. We also have an innovative recyclable compound for Matte surface finish to replace traditional Matte coatings which are not recyclable. This new technology is added in blown or cast film extrusion process as part of the pouch structure, so it eliminates the traditional coating process.
Even with these innovative technologies, there is still a need for “un-friendly” oxygen barrier materials such as Nylon and EVOH. Our solution to this is a new compatibilizer, which is an additive master-batch used in the recycle pelletizing process for compounding these barrier films with PE films into a usable pellet. This final pellet is then added back into producing PE films / bags for industrial use.
Download below for more information and to view the full document.