In a first and unique collaboration for personal care industry, Clariant, Siegwerk, Borealis, and Beiersdorf have partnered to tackle the challenge of creating recyclable consumer packaging, based on 100% retrieved plastic packaging waste, for cosmetics applications.
The pioneering initiative, named “Design4Circularity”, is providing innovations and insights for the different design aspects to encourage others to also follow design for circularity principles.
The cross-industry collaboration is targeting the achievement of truly circular packaging by incorporating full life cycle thinking in each development step, to create a new standard for the industry. Circular packaging supports reduced plastic waste, less use of new/virgin plastic material, and reduced climate impact, which are critical challenges facing our planet.
Richard Haldimann, Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer, at Clariant said, “This collaboration was possible because all participants are dedicated to circular economy, with company-wide programs and holistic understanding of the systems involved. Achieving circularity needs a complete shift in designing product packaging and packaging raw materials, considering sorting, recycling and packaging end-of-life.”
Talking about the collaboration, Stefan Haep, Technology Head Brand Owner Collaboration at Siegwerk, added, “Our initiative is a frontrunner in uniquely assessing circularity in every design parameter, from additives to bottle material to inks, mapping industry competencies, potential gaps, and feasibility proof points to open up viable, ultimately circular solutions.”
The project was to design a packaging solution that creates a cleaner input waste stream and finds its way back into the loop in high-value applications. It should also allow for the high-quality visuals and distinctive shapes consumers associate with cosmetics packaging and brands.
To deliver on all these factors, the innovation centers on a colorless polyolefin bottle with 100% PCR content, full body sleeved in a printed deinkable shrink sleeve. All materials are technically fully recyclable with the potential to be recovered and used for the same high-value application.
Stefan Rüster, Packaging expert from Beiersdorf added, “We follow an ambitious Sustainability Agenda including the vision of fully circular resources. The Design4Circularity packaging solution is ground-breaking for future cosmetics applications.”
“Through the hard work and innovation power of all collaboration partners involved, we have managed to combine the high design requirements of a cosmetic packaging with full circularity. We are very proud of this success and hope that this motivates our industry peers to follow,” said Rüster.
Peter Voortmans, Global Commercial Director Consumer Product, Borealis, concluded, “Transforming to a circular economy is a team effort. Only together with like-minded partners can we shape an ‘ever mindful’ tomorrow. It starts with packaging design in combination with the right sorting and recycling infrastructure, and through collaboration we reinvent essentials for sustainable living.”
Designed to be recycled again and again
Critical design parameters included polymer and additive composition, material selection of sleeve and bottle, sortability and deinking of sleeve material, recyclability, and PCR quality.
To give packaging waste a second life the packaging material needs to retain its highest value through multiple lifecycles. Here, Borealis’s transformational mechanical recycling technology offers high quality PCR based on proprietary Borcycle M technology.
Additionally, Clariant’s design for recycling additive solutions ensures targeted additivation to protect PCR quality and protect against polymer chain breakdown at each recycling step.
This delivered a suitable, high-value PCR material to repeatedly hit the high-end criteria of Personal Care-related consumer packaging. The circular solution additionally focuses on a colorless bottle option to increase PCR quality after recycling.
To achieve differentiation of the packaging despite using an uncolored bottle, the collaboration decided on a full body shrink sleeve as the ideal way to allow for the unique design of individual brands.
Siegwerk provided ink systems, which in collaboration with Beiersdorf and a sleeve manufacturer allowed printing of the sleeve to realise a full body, colored and appealing cosmetic sleeve. Additionally, the chosen new ink composition was designed to allow deinking of the sleeve within a recycling process, increasing the circularity of the packaging. The bottle/shrink sleeve combination is intended for removal at a materials recovery facility.
First sorting trials in existing recycling infrastructure proved the sortability of the full body sleeved HDPE bottle, achieving a high recovery of the bottle’s material. Additionally, the project team conducted trials with full body sleeved, transparent PET bottles and achieved similar results.