Palatinose - Soft Drinks International

42 GREEN ISSUES
Soft Drinks International – February 2011
Environment
Third Clean-up Day
PROVEN a success over the past two years,
the Masafi Clean-Up Day returned to Masafi
Village in 2011 for a third time, its ongoing
effectiveness ensuring that it will be an
annual tradition.
Masafi, one of the Middle East’s biggest
producers of packaged water as well as an
increasingly significant player in the juice sector
and a manufacturer of other FMCG
lines, is very active in sustainability and environmental
protection. It runs a unique corporate
recycling service in the UAE, has
adopted a Carbon Action Plan to reduce its
carbon emissions and uses environmentally
optimised packaging.
The Clean-Up Day is a little different in
that it focuses on the company’s ‘home
town’ in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah.
Masafi mobilises its staff to remove waste
from throughout the town, at the same time
US green
packaging set
to rise
DEMAND for green packaging in the US –
comprised of recycled content, reusable and
degradable packaging – is projected to
increase 3.9% yearly to US$41.7 billion in
2014, consuming 58 billion pounds of material.
Growth will outpace overall packaging
demand but will remain relatively moderate
due to the maturity of many products and
the large existing presence of recycled-content
packaging in paperboard and metal
packaging. The fastest gains are anticipated
for degradable packaging and plastic recycled
content packaging.
These and other trends are presented in
'Green Packaging' a new study from The
Freedonia Group Inc, a Cleveland-based
industry market research firm.
Degradable packaging is forecast to
expand 13.6% annually to US$685 million in
2014, driven by price competitiveness with
conventional resins, capacity expansions and
rising demand for environmentally friendly
manufactured goods. Advances will also be
based on enhanced performance properties
resulting from blending and other modifications,
initiatives by brand owners to improve
the environmental footprint of their packaging.
Preventing faster advances will be the
maturity of some product types, the lack of
consumer composting networks in most
areas of the US, and competition from
emerging green packaging materials such as
non-biodegradable bioplastics.
Masafi Clean-Up Day.
educating local residents to follow recycle,
reuse and reduce habits. This year, 243 staff
collected over nine metric tonnes of waste
in about three hours.
“As a company, we are committed to the
Plastic bottle
recycling up
THE latest report commissioned by Recoup
and sponsored by Nampak Plastics and PPS
Recovery Systems shows an encouraging
increase in the UK's bottle recycling rate
with 46% of plastic bottles now being collected
for recycling.
The revised and finalised data now suggest
a 7% increase in comparison with last
year’s report. Approximately 303,000 tonnes
of plastic packaging was collected from
bring and kerbside schemes for recycling in
2009. From this total, 263,000 tonnes was
reported as plastic bottles.
To put it in perspective, if all the plastic
bottles collected in the UK for recycling in
Recycled-content packaging constitutes
the vast majority of green packaging and
demand is forecast to increase 3.6% annually
to US$37.3 billion in 2014. Gains will be
supported by increased collection activity
and processing capacity, coupled with greater
use of recycled-content packaging by firms
seeking to demonstrate environmental
responsibility and differentiate their products.
Robust growth is anticipated for plastic recycled-content
packaging based on more concerted
collection efforts and expanded
processing capacity.
Reusable packaging demand is expected
to post above-average growth through 2014,
improving from the 2004-2009 pace based
on a rebound in manufacturing activity from
a weak base in 2009.
cause of a sustainable tomorrow and our
efforts are aimed at changing attitudes and
behaviour for a cleaner environment,” said
Natascha Edelmann, Masafi’s Head of Marketing.
2009 were laid end to end, they would
reach the moon and back two times.
The majority (82%) of local authorities
that responded when asked how the plastic
bottle collection scheme was working, indicated
that their schemes were running
smoothly. This suggests that the infrastructure
and support required to launch and
sustainably operate a plastic bottle collection
scheme is now available to most UK
local authorities.
When asked to indicate the reasons and
factors which prevented them from introducing
plastic bottles into kerbside collection
schemes, the most common reasons
given were the ‘cost implications for changing
existing schemes to accommodate the
collection of plastic bottles’ and ‘the difficulties
of adding plastics due to the lack of
compartments available in the kerbside
sorting vehicle’.
According to the data, over 54% of plastic
bottles are still not recycled. Aside from
the issues around reducing landfill reliance
and needing to meet increasing recycling
targets, there is genuine concern that without
a focused effort, the plastic bottle
reprocessing infrastructure in the UK cannot
be sustainably supported by UK bottle collections.
The survey responses suggest that kerbside
schemes could potentially recover
271,000 tonnes of plastic bottles in 2012,
representing 56,000 additional tonnes. If a
yearly 10% increase in household kerbside
coverage and also performance was applied,
the estimated collection could reach over
350,000 tonnes.
The full report is available free from the
Recoup website at: www.recoup.org .