Bee’s Wrap was founded in 2012 by Vermonter Sarah Kaeck to eliminate plastics in our kitchen in favor of a healthier, more sustainable way to store our food. By infusing organic cotton with beeswax, organic jojoba oil, and tree resin, she created a washable, reusable, and compostable alternative to plastic wrap. Since 2012, they’ve created wraps that provide a versatile and durable solution for sustainable food storage.
Plastic water bottles come with a higher price tag than most people realize, taking up to 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill. The fact that at least half of all water bottles are used only once makes the waste that much more egregious. Icelandic product designer Ari Jónsson decided he needed to take action by fashioning a biodegradable water bottle from algae.
His innovative solution to the problem of plastic pollution is agar, a substance made from algae. Agar dates back to the 1650’s, when a Japanese innkeeper tossed out extra soup and saw it gel together overnight. It made its way into microbiology labs in the late 1800’s and is still used today to separate molecules. To create a bottle out of algae, Jónsson mixed powdered agar with water. The resulting mixture had a wobbly, jelly-like consistency, and he heated it before pouring it into a cold mold. The mold was swirled inside a container of ice water until the agar formed a bottle. Just a few more minutes of refrigeration, and the bottle was ready for use. The algae bottle retains its unique shape until it is empty, and then it begins to break down. It’s an all-natural alternative to plastic, and Jónsson says drinkers can even chew on the bottle if they enjoy the taste. Agar is often used as a vegetarian or vegan substitute for gelatin in desserts, and is both safe for the environment and humans.
Every year, nearly 430,000 tons of cocoa shells, a by-product of the cocoa production process, are not utilized around the world.
LeafLAB, Schweitzer-Mauduit International’s botanical materials “think tank” with considerable in-house R&D capabilities, gives a second life to these cocoa shells by transforming them into distinctive packaging and fibers solutions for the food, beverage and cosmetic industries. Recently, LeafLAB began marketing its first products: Cocoa Paper and Cocoa Fibers. Created from cocoa shells (a delicate skin surrounding cocoa beans) and having acquired food contact certification, Cocoa Paper is the first natural paper especially imagined for chocolate and confectionery manufacturers, as well as specialized converters. Because it utilizes the cocoa shells, which have typically been considered a by-product, Cocoa Paper can be considered as an “eco-efficient ” alternative to classic packaging.
COCOA PAPER
LeafLAB produces Cocoa Paper by transforming unprocessed cocoa bean shells. Although inedible, Cocoa Paper is food-contact approved by the French National Metrology Laboratory (LNE) and fully respects the flavors of the products it packages. Ideal for bakery and confectionery creations, this new packaging material sets the standard in gourmet and eco-efficient packaging.
COCOA FIBERS
With patented technology to value botanical by-products, LeafLAB creates Cocoa Fibers: a range of fibers used as a component of paper or cardboard pulp, designed for manufacturers of cardboard and non-woven products. This same technology can also be applied to other botanicals, such as coffee, tea and coconut. With this range of ready-to-use fiber components, packaging professionals set themselves apart from competitors with original, attractive and innovative packaging
Kombucha has become a popular drink. The fermented tea is believed to bring health benefits, and now it could be used to reduce packaging waste with a ‘growing pack’.
Roza Janusz has developed a modified version of the kombucha process. Making kombucha involves using a yeast starter to drive bacterial fermentation. This yeast starter is known as a ‘scoby’. Janusz’s process, which takes two weeks, creates large thin layers of these scobies. The scoby is completely edible. Once removed from the growth tanks, the scoby can dry out and is flexible enough to wrap around other objects.
Janusz has shown that the scoby layer can successfully replace plastic packaging in food products. Furthermore, the packaging could even cook with the contents inside, adding an extra ingredient to pre-prepared meals. The slight acidity of the scoby helps preserve it over a long period — Janusz claims that her first prototype scoby is still edible six months after she made it.
The process is easy to replicate almost anywhere, requiring little more than shallow tubs and the basic ingredients. Because of this, farmers and other fresh food distributors could make their own scoby packaging on-site. Users could also make it at home, as the scoby grows at room temperature and doesn’t require any light or much attention.
German designer Jorn Berger is getting us to rethink how packaging affects our drinking preferences in a series called Ecohol. He has repackaged some of the world’s best known alcoholic drinks, putting them into Tetra Pak cartons. Not only do Berger’s designs challenge us to rethink what really influences our consumer choices, they also offer us a sustainable packaging alternative to glass or plastic bottles.
Tite-Pak is environmentally-friendly packaging which is recyclable in the established Old Corrugated Container (OCC) and mixed paper recycling streams.
Implemented at full capacity, the Tite-Pak recyclable institutional french fry bag packaging initiative has the potential to divert up to 30-million pounds of packaging material from the landfill to the recycling stream annually. According to the EPA, the diversion of 30 million pounds of paper waste per year corresponds to more than 250,000 trees, 105 million gallons of water, 5 million gallons of oil, and 49,000 cubic yards of landfill space, with a reduction of more than 60 million kW energy.
In an effort to eliminate the problem of petroleum-based plastic bottles altogether, the sustainable brand Ooho has created a biodegradable organic membrane made of brown algae and calcium chloride that serves as a blob-shaped vessel to carry your water sans-bottle.
The first-ever fully recyclable PET plastic beverage bottle made partially from plants looks and functions just like traditional PET plastic, but has a lighter footprint on the planet and its scarce resources.
Spice and food flavouring giant McCormick & Company committed to create packaging innovations that reduce packaging weight and overall carbon footprint, among other important environment goals such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water reduction. In developing an integrated approach to meeting these commitments through its 4R framework of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renew, the company reported progress that includes:
Procter & Gamble partnered with Terracycle and Suez, the largest waste management company in Europe, to source, develop and put out the first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25% beach plastic for the world’s #1 shampoo brand, Head & Shoulders.