Environmentally improved packaging

The packaging sector presents numerous opportunities, but also various challenges, in particular related to the end-of-life (EoL) of the packaging. Despite the fact that BOBST has minimal leverage on the use & EoL of the packaging, it is part of a value chain responsible for generating considerable amount of waste and related issues, such as littering. Besides, the amount of waste resulting from EoL packaging made with BOBST machines is most likely significantly higher than the waste generated by Group’s operations themselves.

Acknowledging this fact, BOBST puts efforts in developing environmentally improved packaging solutions. The complexity of developing sustainable solutions to implement more recyclability in packaging and improve their environmental footprint means that BOBST is actively working with stakeholders, brand owners, and even retailers across the value chain that are committed to sustainability to develop partnerships and collaborations.

Reducing the volume of packaging materials used, designing nonrecyclable multi-material packaging structures, or substituting difficult-to-recycle packaging materials with more recycle-friendly solutions, creates a real challenge for packaging designers and producers. The new materials and their behaviors differ from a processability and performance perspective. In general, sustainable and recyclable materials have inferior mechanical, thermal, and barrier properties than conventional substrates, reducing the protection these packages offer and the shelf-life of their products.

Waste generated by suboptimal packaging design, like oversized corrugated boxes in e-commerce or packages produced outside the desired specifications, lies outside BOBST’s packaging use (PU) & end-of-life (EoL) scope, as it depends on customers’ use of their production equipment (film producers and converters). The PU & EoL stream focuses on developing processes and packaging as manufactured products. It aims to improve its sustainability or develop alternative reusable, recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable materials to enable the industry to manufacture more environmentally friendly packaging.

Together with a supporting ecosystem of industry-leading partners and collaborators, BOBST has designed and developed a family of new high-barrier, mono-material, recycle-ready substrates which have performance levels equivalent to the non-recyclable mixed material equivalents. These solutions have been stepped up from R&D solutions to industrialized solutions and have been successfully promoted and accepted in the market. It will enable BOBST customers to fast-track the development phase in creating more circular packaging solutions and help reduce their time to market to help support waste reduction and resource circularity.

The current difficulties in sorting out flexible packaging often result in downcycling or sending to the incinerator or landfill large quantities of material that could be recycled. R-Cycle is a cross-industry consortium launched with the aim of ensuring the traceability of single use plastics, thanks to Digital Product Passports (DPP) storing relevant recycling information along the flexible packaging production value chain. It thus enables the recovery of high-quality recyclables supporting a functioning circular economy. BOBST completed a pilot at its Competence Center in Manchester, where the demo machine is R-Cycle ready.

With over 190 European companies, associations, and organizations representing the entire flexible packaging value chain, BOBST contributes to CEFLEX’s Mission Circular by actively supporting two of its work streams, namely WS1 (design guidelines) and WS3 (sustainable end markets) where BOBST has used its Competence Centers in Manchester (United Kingdom), San Giorgio Monferrato (Italy) and also Bielefeld (Germany) to metallize, laminate and print recycled materials. CEFLEX commits to collecting all flexible packaging and over 80% of the recycled materials channeled into valuable new markets and applications to substitute virgin materials, to make all flexible packaging in Europe circular by 2025. A five-step roadmap to build a circular economy for flexible packaging has been endorsed by CEFLEX stakeholders, together with a set of actions needed by each part of the value chain to make it happen.

The PU & EoL stream and their supporting industry partners and collaborators positioned through the value chain developed a monomaterial polymer flexible packaging solution (oneBARRIER PrimeCycle) and a second one based on a mono-material fiber-based solution (oneBARRIER FibreCycle). In addition, independent recycling assessments were used to illustrate the recyclability of the developed environmentally friendly solutions.

This cross-industry alliance aims to optimize fiber-based packaging circularity and climate performance to raise the overall recycling rate of fiber-based packaging to 90% by 2030. By bringing together the entire value chain, 4evergreen enables cooperation with a comprehensive outlook on fiber-based packaging’s life cycle. 4evergreen is driven by the insights and initiatives of its members via four technical workstreams (WS) that focus on different aspects of fiber-based packaging, as well as an information workstream and a steering group. BOBST joined the 4evergreen alliance in May 2022 and is currently selecting what workstreams to participate in.

With its supporting customers, partners, and collaborators, BOBST will continue to validate, develop and optimize its currently developed oneBARRIER recyclable packaging solutions for different product or market applications to extend its appropriate field and help to bring more circular and environmentally friendly packaging solutions into the market. Moreover, the PU & EoL stream is also investigating new environmentally friendly packaging solutions to be developed in BOBST’s four primary industries: folding carton, corrugated board, label, and flexible materials.

BOBST will start to investigate quantitative measures to help understand the impact of the developed solutions in terms of ease of recyclability and environmental impact while also supporting circularity and waste reduction.

BOBST will continue to contribute and participate actively in the three key consortiums it is involved in, namely CEFLEX, R-Cycle, and 4evergreen while continuing to review the industry to assess further cross-industry alliances of relevance to BOBST’s four primary sectors, which could help to support its sustainability strategy.

The stream has identified a number of key objectives involving the development of environmentally friendly packaging solutions across the four industries BOBST represents, investigation into the tools or methods to assess the environmental impact of the packing solution developed, active participation in the selected main industry consortiums and/or alliances focusing on sustainability and providing training and dissemination internally and externally concerning the packaging solutions developed.

The stream has created a number of supporting KPI’s aligned with the stream’s identified objectives, focused around the development and industry interest in environmentally improved packaging solutions.

Within the 3Rs Waste Management (a global initiative the packaging industry has already taken and is currently implementing to prevent packaging use & end-of-life waste, aiming to reduce, re-use, and recycle packaging waste to keep as much material & resources out of the landfill or incinerated as possible), BOBST focused on recycle-ready solutions to reduce PU & EoL waste for its customers and the general packaging industry downstream in the value chain.