Sustainable plastic packaging

As a result of rising environmental conscious, discussions and campaigns, people’s interest in packaging reduction, recycling and biodegradable materials has increased. Despite all these actions and great coverage of the topics in media, many are still uncertain and misinformed about the benefits of plastic packaging compared to alternative solutions.

The real value of plastic packaging is its incomparable capabilities to protect the supply chain of goods in minimum resources. An increasing use of lightweight flexible packaging reduces both the weight of transportation and the proportion of the packaged goods that are wasted – both of which reduce CO2 emissions. Packaging safeguards also our food from for example external contamination and the spread of microbes.

Bioplastics are increasingly important members of the plastic family and Suominen Flexibles is also using these materials as a part of our product offering. For us biodegradability means fulfilling the European standard EN13432 of compostability of plastics.

The climate effects of shopping bags are studied

Shopping bags have been a prominent topic of debate lately. Many countries have banned disposable bags or imposed a tax on them. According to the OPTIKASSI survey published by Finnish Environment Institute and Lappeenranta University of Technology in January 2009, the environmental effects of production, use and disposal of shopping bags are small compared with other consumption.

According to the results, a plastic bag manufactured from recycled material is the best option from all the compared shopping bag alternatives - plastic bag of virgin material, paper bag, canvas bag and biodegradable plastic bag. Contrary to the prior studies a canvas bag manufactured from cotton is not the best option due to high amount water and energy required in cotton production. This production method causes lots of green house emissions. Biodegradable shopping bag was discovered to be the worst option.