Many of the world’s largest retailers and food companies have agreed to better labelling of products by 2020 in a bid to radically cut food waste.  Large global companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, Tesco, Kellogg, Nestle, Carrefour and Unilever, supported a “call to action” sponsored by the Consumer Goods Forum and unveiled on the sidelines of the United Nations General...

Fighting the ‘trifecta’ of food waste, packaging waste, and fraud would be the focus of a proposed research centre which already has the support of the Australian Institute of Packaging and RMIT University. The proposed Fight Food Waste & Fraud Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) has gained the support of a large number of partners, with new packaging innovations among its top...

Similar to the material stream itself, the industry is undergoing a shift – one in which basic diversion rates no longer suffice to tell the story about program effectiveness. During one session at the recent Resource Recycling Conference in Minneapolis, leaders from different realms of materials recovery discussed ways of thinking about measurement, strategies for action based on those...

Recovered paper – the paper and cardboard from our recycling bins – is a valuable raw material and South Africa has been using it as an alternative fibre in papermaking since 1920.  Around 1.4 million tonnes of recyclable paper and paper packaging was diverted from landfill in 2016. This is the equivalent to the weight of 280,000 African elephants and the same volume would cover 254 soccer...

Chemicals giant Dow has developed an adhesive that allows flexible film packaging with layers of PET and aluminum to be replaced by all-polyolefin films, which are easier to recycle. The chemical company’s ADCOTE L86-500 barrier adhesive would allow a coffee pouch made from layers of PET/aluminum/PE to be replaced by BOPP/metallized BOPP/PE, said Uta Ünal, business communications...

Huhtamaki has launched an interactive cup featuring a heat-sensitive label and QR code that links to digital content. The Adtone cup has a thermosensitive label that reveals the unique code as the cup is filled with a hot beverage. The heat from the beverage activates the thermochromic printing on the label, revealing the QR code. Customers can then scan this code with their mobile phone and...

Dutch creative agency Fitzroy goes from ‘waste to wasted’ when it collects Coca-Cola bottle labels from the beaches and melts them down to make one-of-a-kind caps for its new rum brand. Fitzroy Amsterdam has taken an entirely new approach to reusing beach plastics for packaging. Its strategy, “From waste to wasted,” involves collecting plastic Coca-Cola...

Making polyester fiber from used PET bottles is nothing new. But it’s new to the National Basketball Association for this upcoming season. The league, which is changing uniform suppliers from Adidas to Nike, says each uniform will include fiber made from 20 recycled bottles. In making the announcement, the NBA said the new uniforms will feature design changes, the most significant...

Consol Glass and local wine producers from Stellenbosch have collaborated to create a new Claret/Bordeaux shaped glass bottle that specifically identifies Stellenbosch Cabernets. Stellenbosch is best known for its superior wines and has long been promoting itself as a premium wine growing area, especially for Cabernet. As a region, it celebrates the most wine awards per capita when...

Coca-Cola in the UK has created an ad made entirely out of its 100 per cent recyclable packaging. Love Story, created by Ogilvy and Mather Berlin, tells the story of two bottles who fall in love as they meet over and over again after being disposed of properly and recycled into new bottles. The ad aims to encourage more people to recycle, and highlights how plastic bottles can be reused to...