kcc

MD Kevin Clarke to address Biomass Connect and Wicked Problems Summer School at Oxford Brookes

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 15:54:47 GMT

Two conferences to benefit from Kevin's deep knowledge

We are delighted to announce that KCC’s MD Kevin Clarke is speaking at two events in September. Firstly, the Biomass Connect Demo Day on 12th September 2024, to be held at Bio Global Industries Ltd in Asheridge, Cheshire, and two days later, on September 14th 2024, at the "Wicked Problems, Creative Solutions" at the Oxford Brookes Summer School.

The Biomass Connect event enables farmers and landowners to connect with industry pioneers and leaders, and in KCC's case, see how compostable food packaging made from natural fibre is being introduced into the food industry to replace plastic containers. This heralds a virtuous cycle of crop waste being turned into packaging and thenat end of life, returned to the soil to enrich it.

The 'Wicked Problems, Creative Solutions' conference focuses on tackling complex challenges with innovative approaches, which perfectly aligns with our mission at KCC. We're dedicated to developing sustainable alternatives to plastic packaging, and Kevin will discuss the potential of coated fibre-based solutions such as our revolutionary product, riji.

riji is a wet-moulded fibre product designed for wet foods, boasting a unique moisture barrier. It's already making waves in the food industry, offering a certified heat-resistant alternative to traditional plastic packaging. For airlines and other markets using aluminium foil, riji is a better option because it retains heat for much longer, and does not flex, making it easier to handle by crew and passengers alike.

If you are interested in learning more about riji and how we're tackling the "wicked problem" of plastic waste in the packaging industry, please contact Kevin Clarke on kevin@kccpackaging.com

The plastic pollutant hiding in plain sight

Thu, 04 May 2023 10:43:14 GMT

Research has found that farm plastics are a major pollution problem but not a priority for supermarkets. By David Burrows .

There is more plastic in soils than in the sea, warned the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2021, but is anything being done about it? Not really, according to research published by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

Agriplastics include protective greenhouse covers, plastic mulching, netting, pipes for irrigation and silage films. They increase short-term crop yields and extend local growing seasons, but can also reduce long-term productivity by deteriorating soil quality, EIA noted. They can also contaminate land, rivers, oceans and air.

The campaigners quizzed 10 UK supermarkets – Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Iceland, Lidl, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose – about use of agriplastic within their supply chains and what they are doing to manage any pollution risks.

All the supermarkets have engaged somewhat with suppliers on the issue – through trials, raising awareness or third-party certification standards – but only Lidl said it had sufficient information about the impact and risks of agriplastic pollution on the environment and human health. Measurable objectives, company-level sourcing policies and funding were also found to be lacking across all the chains.

Indeed, seven supermarkets are currently working in some capacity with suppliers on the reduction and responsible management of agriplastics, with four supermarkets having more than one project underway in certain produce or product categories. However, none of the projects had any measurable or time-bound targets.

In the UK, only 30% of non-packaging agri-plastics, such as polytunnels and bale wrap — excluding packaging such as chemical containers and sacks — is collected for reuse, according to APE (Agriculture Plastics Environment) UK, an industry-led initiative aiming to increase recycling of farm plastics.

“[These supermarkets] have other sustainability targets, including plastic packaging reduction targets but little or nothing regarding the plastics being used by their suppliers to cultivate food and the devastating pollution that results,” said Lauren Weir, EIA senior ocean campaigner.

"We need genuinely sustainable alternatives and for those with the purchasing power, such as our major grocery retailers, to take unified action across their international supply chains to ensure the UK’s food supply chain does not result in driving damage in other sourcing regions,” she added.

The 10 supermarkets all said they’d welcome a sector-wide initiative dedicated to tackling agriplastic pollution. EIA called for “immediate and urgent action” on the most damaging agriplastics – microplastic applications and mulch films – and warned against simply switching to other materials (as many have done with consumer-facing packaging). Substitution is a “false solution”, the group said.

The National Farmers’ Union has called for more research into bio-based alternatives to plastic that could be composted on farms. The Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association has argued that its members “make materials which are designed to resolve this pollution”.

Some 12.5 million tonnes of plastic is used in agricultural production every year, FAO noted in its global report, the majority (93%) of it on land – which makes soil the likely destination for anything that’s damaged, degraded and discarded. How much, what happens to it all and the impact it has are poorly understood, according to the Environment Agency’s 2019 ‘The state of the environment: soil’ report . There are also increasing concerns about the levels of plastic spread to land in digestate and sewage sludge .

Other than an unsupported agriplastic burying and burning ban, the UK government has little or no policy ideas or plans to address the issues, despite having the regulatory responsibility to do so, said EIA.

Others have been trying to raise awareness for years. “Healthy soils are vital to sustaining food supplies, act as a critical flood defence and store three times more carbon than the atmosphere, yet the UK does nothing as study after study reveals that plastic contamination of soil is even worse than it is in the sea,” Ellen Fay, director of the Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA), told Ends Report following the FAO report .

EIA is calling for mandatory reporting on agricultural plastic products and an extended producer responsibility scheme for the materials. Further research into alternatives and their benefits and trade-offs is needed, as well as support for agroecology and permaculture in UK farms to help reduce agriplastic use.

The new research comes in the midst of fruit and vegetable shortages. The trouble is that agricultural plastic helps grow more food in a hungry world, APE UK chief executive Ian Creasey told the FT . “Plastics play a really important part in farm life and have environmental benefits,” he said. “That works if you efficiently collect the plastic on the farm. It doesn’t work if there isn’t that ‘circularity’ and you let that plastic get burnt or go to landfill.”

April 11, 2023

Read the original article here on Footprint, Sustainable Responsible Business

GOV. PRESS RELEASE - Ban on more plastic items

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 11:47:50 GMT

Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey is set to confirm a ban on the supply of a range of harmful plastics later this week.

The ban will include single use plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, balloon sticks, and certain types of polystyrene cups and food containers.

This comes after the Government’s consultation on plans to ban these single-use plastics, which received overwhelming public support. To allow businesses time to prepare, the bans will be introduced in England from October 2023.

Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said:

“A plastic fork can take 200 years to decompose, that is two centuries in landfill or polluting our oceans.

“I am determined to drive forward action to tackle this issue head on. We’ve already taken major steps in recent years – but we know there is more to do, and we have again listened to the public’s calls.

“This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations.”

England uses 608 million single-use plates and 2.3 billion items of single-use cutlery — most of which are plastic — per year, but only 10% are recycled. Plastic cutlery was also in the top 15 most littered items by count in 2020*.

These plans build on efforts to eliminate avoidable plastic waste, including one of the world’s toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products announced in 2018, restrictions on the supply of single-use plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds in 2020, and our Plastic Packaging Tax in April 2022.

We have also taken action at an international level and have led the way in pushing for an ambitious and effective treaty to end plastic pollution, including through a coalition of over 50 countries.

Through the Environment Act, the Government is bringing in a wide range of further measures to tackle plastic pollution and litter, including:

Introducing a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers to recycle billions more plastic bottles and stop them being landfilled, incinerated, or littered. Through a small deposit placed on drinks products, the DRS will incentivise people to recycle;
Our Extended Producer Responsibility scheme will mean packaging producers will be expected to cover the cost of recycling and disposing of their packaging.
Our plans for Consistent Recycling Collections for every household and business in England will ensure more plastic is recycled.

* According to Defra’s 2020 Litter Composition Report

Venturefest Pitch Battle

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 14:54:27 GMT

Kevin Clarke got the opportunity to pitch our riji trays to investors at Venturefest South. An exciting day full of people with new ideas deserving of winning some capital.

'A compostable alternative to the single-use trays in convenience meals and takeaways, which are use two billion times a year in the UK, developed by KCC Packaging in Eastleigh. Managing Director Kevin Clarke said: "Everybody knows the current takeaway-type products which are used, which are largely polypropylene, a microwavable product and a plastic which is not widely recycled." He said KCC Packaging's products are suitable for fresh or frozen foods and safe at up to 240 degrees Celsius in the oven. They are made from plants and have a low carbon footprint, he said, and the range includes trays, lids for takeaways and cups.'

Article below:

New Paragraph

UCL research shows need for industrial composting and clearer labelling

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 12:48:30 GMT

Responding to this week’s UCL study into the use of home compostable packaging in the UK, Chairman of the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association, Andy Sweetman, said:

“The results of this welcome research show that compostable packaging actually does biodegrade but that there is huge variability when the process is handled through home composting, and confusion over which materials are suitable. Many home composters are actually trying to compost plastics which are not at all compostable. We need to end the use of terms like degradable and biodegradable to avoid consumer confusion."

“In order to treat food and garden waste most effectively on a large scale, we need household collection systems and industrial composting. Consumers should be encouraged to place certified compostable packaging into their food waste bins as in many countries around the world."

“Home composting is a part of the picture and we encourage this practice, while large scale composting achieved through an industrial process, involving both a composting phase and anaerobic digestion to produce soil-improvers and biogas will give all householders a route to recycling food and garden waste along with certified compostables".

Anaerobic Digestion Plant

BBIA represents UK producers of compostable plastics, an industry that is a relative newcomer to the world of packaging materials. Whilst we have mature businesses operating here, we are also still on a steep technological learning curve and always welcome the opportunity of improving our materials and infrastructure to maximise ecological benefits.

Further background analysis on the UCL study, which BBIA members participated in, is below:

(a) Home composting is by its very nature a variable process. There are various types of home composting unit; the mix of garden and any kitchen-source organic waste added will differ, as will local geography, weather and moisture content as well as the level of experience of the gardeners themselves.

(b) The report itself confirmed that only 40% of the packaging items added by householders actually carried a claim of home-compostability and indeed 46% of the items added did not make any claim to any relevant standard whatsoever. As such, ‘perfect’ levels of compostability could never have been achieved.

(c) Independently certified home-compostable materials do compost: Given the varied source of the packaging items added into the home-compost units, it is actually quite impressive that 45% of all items tried out had either completely disintegrated or broken down to less than 2mm and a further 31% showed significant levels of degradation. Only 24% of items failed to show any notable break-down, most likely those which made no claim to be compostable in the first place!

(d) The report itself states that compostable materials play an important role; they facilitate the reduction of conventional plastic waste that leaks through food waste treatment systems to soil. According to the Environment Agency a variety of sources are inadvertently spreading some 100KT of conventional persistent plastics to soil in the UK annually. Using compostables in applications that on disposal are likely to be co-treated with food waste will dramatically reduce that pollution.

(e) Consumers are not professional waste management experts. The BBIA both fully supports and indeed is actively engaged in delivering better and more consistent labelling of compostable products. We also call for an end to any unclear or unsubstantiated on-pack terminology such as ‘degradable’ or ‘biodegradable’ that may confuse them. The BBIA is clear, however, that appropriate independently certified and marketed compostable packaging is not greenwashing.

(f) Home composting is welcome, and we encourage it, but we also recognise that only a small part of the public can take part. In order to treat food and garden waste professionally we need collection systems and industrial composting along with anaerobic digestion to producer bio-fertilisers, soil-improvers and biogas and ensure treatment is carried out according to the highest environmental standards. Already in the UK 24 large scale composting facilities actively collect and process compostable packaging materials.

(g) Compostable materials (bags, caddy liners and so on…) play a crucial role in maximising the collection of such waste ensuring less contamination from plastics and pollution to soil. Such systems are growing across the globe from Korea to California, Italy to Denmark, Austria to Spain. Here in the UK we need further investments in and technological development of organic waste treatment plants to ensure maximum recovery both of the food and garden waste we all produce, and the compostable packaging we receive, to produce the most beneficial outcomes for our society and national economy.

Compost Site Map

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:23:50 GMT

The REA (The Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology) have published a compost site map.

This is collated from published data and is separate from the work REAL are doing on sites accepting compostables.

The map shows permitted compost sites, those who are ABP approved (so can take food waste) and those who are Compost Certification Scheme (PAS100) certified.

Find the map HERE.

Unwrapping the Biowaste Potential

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 09:14:28 GMT

What it means when plastics contaminate food waste and how that can be rectified.

Research commissioned by the European Circular Bioeconomy Policy Initiative with a foreword from David Newman

Composting - Nature's Way of Recycling

Read the original article here

Kevin Clarke speaks at Kent University's Sustainable Packaging Forum

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 13:35:33 GMT

Sustainable packaging challenges for the county and beyond

On Thursday 15 September 2022, the University hosted Growing Kent and Medway’s first Sustainable Packaging Forum, bringing together key stakeholders from industry, policy and academia for an afternoon of inspiring presentations and the opportunity to discuss how to deliver a real circular sustainable packaging ecosystem across Kent and beyond.

Attendees enjoyed a series of inspiring talks from leading industry on the current sustainable packaging goals and challenges facing the food and drink sector, as well as getting the chance to join a regional business network to address packaging challenges and targets from the roots up.

Opening remarks were given by Dr Lori Fisher, Growing Kent & Medway research fellow, who introduced the forum’s aims and reflected on the current challenges in packaging, and opportunities to collaborate.

The first speaker, Dan Crooks from iFruit, introduced the packaging challenges from a suppliers perspective. Dan was followed by Dr Jon Mitchell from Nextloopp who introduced the audience to their circular food-grade PP from post-consumer packaging. The audience then heard from Kevin Clarke from KCC Packaging who presented how compostables can make food waste work in a circular environment. Graham Hayward, from Kent based paper mill Smurfit Kappa, then showcased the sustainability capabilities of the mill. The final speaker, Kieran Bevan from Triflex productions took the audience through sustainable flexible packaging and solutions for food and drink businesses.

Dr Rob Barker, Senior Lecturer at Kent and co-host of the event said: “It’s clear that we have the technologies emerging across the sector to move away from a packaging ecosystem reliant on virgin and traditional packaging materials, but much work is still needed to optimise and close the loop on these systems and allow us to move quickly enough to embrace new technologies.

“This will only be possible through the continued, open conversations that the Forum started and we’re excited at the University of Kent and as the Growing Kent and Medway consortia to take a lead in facilitating these conversations and enabling collaborations between our academic community and industry to make this vision of a circular sustainable packaging ecosystem a reality.”

Networking was held before and after the forum, so that delegates were able to network with other like-minded attendees and discuss their ideas with the guest speakers. This provided a unique opportunity for attendees to meet technical experts to discuss packaging needs and challenges, and information regional decision making. Audience members were able to ask questions to the speakers and receive feedback on their packaging needs and ideas.

Kevin Clarke at KCC Packaging said: “The event enabled a robust discussion on the challenges of allowing the status quo to persist. Much stronger actions are needed to create meaningful systemic changes in packaging & food waste management, if the UK is to gain better outcomes for the environment in our drive to reach net zero. This need for action was underlined by the broad section of industry experts who supported the event.”

The team at Kent will be issuing a report on the future of sustainable packaging in the coming months. For more information about the Growing Kent & Medway Sustainable Packaging Forum, please contact the team growingbiotech@kent.ac.uk .

By Katherine Moss 27 September 2022

Read the original article here

DEFRA avoiding ‘meaningful scientific discussion’ on compostables, says BBIA

Tue, 24 May 2022 13:57:00 GMT

The Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) has written to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) challenging the stance it has currently adopted with compostable packaging.

Despite growth in demand for ‘organic recycling through composting and anaerobic digestion’, the Government’s response to the consultation on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) shows a disregard for compostables. The letter also claims that, ahead of an official response on the Consistency consultation, Minister Jo Churchill ‘stated to a fellow stakeholder that “we do not want compostable bags”’.

By determining compostable bags to be unsuitable for food waste collections in England, the letter says, Defra is seemingly stating that ‘we some small doubts about compostable films, despite clear evidence in their favour, we prefer not to have them. Instead, we’ll have plastic bags, which we have no doubt will leave macro and microplastics in compost, digestate, and, therefore, soils.’

In recent months, BBIA said, Defra has developed a ‘decidedly polemic view regarding compostables and globally accepted standards for biodegradability’. Continuing, the association asserted that ‘rather than engage in meaningful scientific discussion’, the Department has ‘opted to move forward with a system for packaging and food waste which goes against the actual evidence, net-zero ambitions and desire of the market.’

In the letter, BBIA says it has been in ‘regular contact’ with Defra officials, seeking meetings with Minister Jo Churchill and offering her a visit to ‘the UK’s largest composting facility, which actively seeks more compostable packaging.’ However, the association claims that the apparent lack of engagement is ‘undemocratic’.

The letter concludes by inviting the Minister and the Department’s Chief Scientific Advisor to meet with the BBIA to discuss the risks posed by the current policy stance, including:

The contribution of compostable products (bags, packaging and other items such as teabags) to the future bioresources (waste) industry and UK PLC in the context of net-zero.
The underlying science and standards relating to biodegradation of (compostable plastic) materials and the false assumptions relating to microplastics.

The letter is accompanied by others from stakeholders in the compostables industry. In one of these, organics reprocessors ENVAR, questions the evidence behind the decision to label compostable packaging as ‘do not recycle’. This, ENVAR asserts, will damage producers of compostable packaging and ‘raise doubts’ among the company’s compost customers.

Keenan Recycling also issued a letter to Defra on compostable packaging’s exclusion from recycling labels, stating that the Department’s position that compost may contain microplastics ‘could really set the industry back’, damaging the trust the company has built with farmers and agricultural groups.

The letter called on Defra to explain its grounds for this claim, adding that ‘if there is an absence of such evidence’, it would ‘appreciate the ability to continue to collect and process compostable packaging along with food waste’.

By Emma Love | 20 May 2022

Read the original article here

Plastic crisis needs binding treaty, report says

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 14:26:41 GMT

Pollution from plastics is a global emergency in need of a robust UN treaty, according to a report.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says there's a cascade of evidence of harm from plastics.

It argues that the plastic pollution threat is almost equivalent to climate change.

The air we breathe now contains plastic micro particles, there’s plastic in Arctic snow , plastic in soils and plastic in our food.

It's reported, for instance, that about 20 elephants in Thailand have died after eating plastic waste from a rubbish dump.

The authors urge nations to agree a UN treaty with binding targets for reducing both plastic production and waste.

"There is a deadly ticking clock counting swiftly down," said the EIA’s Tom Gammage.

"If this tidal wave of pollution continues unchecked, the anticipated plastics in the seas by 2040 could exceed the collective weight of all fish in the ocean."

The United Nations has identified three existential environmental threats - climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution - and concluded that they must be addressed together.

Multilateral agreements on biodiversity loss and climate have existed for nearly 30 years (although they have failed to halt CO2 emissions or protect the natural world).

The idea of a dedicated plastics treaty has been opposed by some nations in recent years.

But more than 100 countries, including the UK, are said to favour a treaty being proposed at the next UN Environment Assembly in February and March.

Sources say outright opposition is weakening, although there's a dispute as to how strict the treaty should be, and whether it should be legally binding or voluntary.

US President Joe Biden has announced that the US now supports a global agreement, previously resisted by former President Donald Trump.

It’s not clear, though, whether he can win approval from Congress, as most plastics are made from oil and gas - and they're both produced in the US.

Japan is said to be trying to diminish the ambition of the treaty. The Arab Gulf states and China have been silent so far. China produces most "virgin plastic", although the US and UK are said to be the biggest producers of waste per person.

Launching the EIA report, Mr Gammage said: "The visible nature of plastic pollution has generated huge public concern but the vast majority of plastic pollution impacts are invisible.

"The damage done by rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycle is irreversible - this is a threat to human civilisation and the planet’s basic ability to maintain a habitable environment. It’s becoming almost as serious as the threat from climate change."

Prof Richard Thompson from Plymouth University, an authority on plastics, told BBC News a UN treaty should focus on the full life-cycle analysis of plastics.

He said: "The underlying cause of the problem is rooted in unsustainable levels of production and consumption.

"Advocating policies that merely promote the use of plastics that are 'recyclable' won’t be effective unless there’s a local infrastructure to collect, separate, and viably recycle those plastics.

"Polices to promote the use of 'compostable' plastics will only be effective if there is appropriate local infrastructure to handle that waste stream."

A spokesman for the British Plastics Federation told BBC News: "Plastic is a lightweight, safe, and energy-efficient material, and simply replacing it with alternatives can often have negative environmental consequences, as well as ramifications for health and safety.

"The unfortunate scenes of plastic waste washing up in oceans around the world are a direct result of improperly managed plastic waste in many areas, and if we want to make a difference, this is where the focus should be."

Plastics researcher Trisia Farrelly, from Massey University in New Zealand, told BBC News that oil and gas firms, which produce the feedstock for most plastics, were striving to focus attention on plastic waste, rather than the production of plastic altogether.

She said: "The question now is, what will that treaty look like? Will there be a weak form that focuses on marine litter and waste management? Or will there be a resolution that includes the full life cycle of plastics including extraction and production right through to remediation of legacy pollution?"

She agreed that more science was needed to determine the toxicity of plastics, but argued that delay was dangerous.

"The science is relatively new on a number of plastics pollution impacts and some of the science is complex," she said.

"But there is more than enough evidence to know that we have to act with urgency to prevent further irredeemable damage caused by plastics pollution."

Hans Peter Arp, chemistry professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, agreed there are many unknowns, but he maintained that plastic pollution was already breaching what’s known as a planetary boundary - a threshold that should not be crossed because of the risk to humankind.

He told BBC News: "My colleagues and I have argued that plastic pollution fills the three criteria of a planetary boundary threat: 1) increasing exposure, 2) irreversible presence in the global ecosystem, 3) evidence that it is causing ecological harm, and that this harm will increase with plastic emissions.

"The rational response to the global threat posed by accumulating and poorly reversible plastic pollution is to rapidly reduce consumption of virgin plastic materia ls , along with internationally coordinated strategies for waste management."

Although same large firms are resisting tough global rules, others are in support. One group, plasticpollutiontreaty.org, invites firms to sign up to strict standards to ensure a level playing field for plastic business.

Follow Roger on Twitter .

BBiA Newsletter January 2022

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 16:00:21 GMT

Dear readers,

Happy New Year to all our readers and our best wishes for a healthy and prosperous year ahead.

Despite most of us taking a long vacation, it seems the newsreel never ceases and there are lots of reports and updates to give in this edition. We enter the year awaiting the outcome of the consultations DEFRA have promised to publish on waste collections, EPR and DRS. Over three years have passed since the first consultations were launched, and I believe I speak for many of those in the associations by saying that we want to make progress as fast as possible and implement the policies. It is time to act.

We have submitted as further evidence to DEFRA a recent scientific paper from Spain showing analyses from five composting plants in which absolutely no residues of compostables were found in compost whereas considerable residues of plastics are to be found.

The study proves that: "No debris from compostable bioplastics were found in any of the samples, meaning that if correctly composted their current use does not contribute to the spreading of anthropogenic pollution.

"Our results suggested that the use of compostable polymers and the implementation of door-to-door collection systems could reduce the concentration of plastic impurities in compost from OFMSW."

It is always good when scientists confirm that these materials do what they claim to do- they compost. This is particularly relevant now that reports of the damage done to our health from microplastics are confirmed by scientific studies, as the Daily Mail reported here .

DEFRA is not alone in consulting. Northern Ireland’s consultation on Single-Use Plastics has been extended until 14 January so please do submit your thoughts – the link is here . HMRC has consulted on the Plastic Tax, which all BBIA members are still horrified and enraged by – not because we don’t want to pay taxes, but because our category will be probably the one most taxed, as we cannot chemically, biologically or physically recycle composted plastics back into compostable plastic. We submitted a long paper on the methodology of accounting for the tax and hope HMRC will read it, at the very least. I suppose it is too much to ask for justice.

Enjoy the newsletter and looking forward to seeing you, Covid allowing (will it ever end?).

David Newman

Managing Director

KCC bids farewell to Gill

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 14:33:16 GMT

KCC thanking Gill Hackney for 5 years service and wishing Gill a long happy retirement. Gill a fan of Lion bars was given an inscribed flower vase filled with one of her favourite treats, her cheerful attitude to work has been a pleasure to work with said Kevin MD.

KCC at the House of Lords

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 16:15:30 GMT

On the 24th November, our MD, Kevin, had the opportunity to speak at the House of Lords, hosted by Lord Chris Rennard. Over 100 people, including peers and MP's attended to to discuss climate change and the role of bio-based and biodegradable materials. The gathering also included talks from IBLF , NNFCC and E4Te ch as well as networking opportunities, and was concluded by Andy Sweetman, Chairman of the BBIA

Check out Kevin's talk below

BBiA Market Update 2021

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 13:38:36 GMT

Production News

Many compostable polymer producers are going through supply chain issues common to the plastics and paper industries – shortages of primary raw materials; problems with deliveries; new rules between the EU and UK on trade; demand exceeding supply capacity. We are seeing a significant volume of raw materials sucked into India, the USA, and China as a result of policies promoting the use of compostable materials.

At the same time, policy uncertainty in the EU and UK has hindered the development of new production capacity. Despite this, the Total-Corbion plant in France is under construction, leading to another 100KT capacity annually of PLA, as well as the Thai Natureworks plant , which is expected to produce circa 75KT of PLA – official planning permission was granted this summer.

The UK is importing more or less all of its compostable polymers, Ingevity in Runcorn being the largest industrial UK producer, along with other BBIA members like Biome and Futamura also manufacturing on these shores. Compounding capacity in the UK is also currently very small. The global market pull for compostables is so strong that this represents a major opportunity for the UK chemical industry, both for the domestic and export markets, that is largely overlooked by policymakers.

Sustainability News

Concern over the use of PFAS-containing substances in all spheres is increasing – it is commonly used legally in applications that require moisture and grease barriers, largely catering ware. Due to the environmental and health concerns over PFAS, European Bioplastics, which owns the seedling logo widely used to identify compostables, will now no longer allow the use of their logo on any products containing PFAS. This strongly signals to the marketplace that these substances are no longer acceptable.

The use of new raw materials in manufacturing was hailed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a necessary route to reduce plastic waste. The UK is a leader in start-ups using innovative raw materials to make products typically made from plastic – these include fungi, seaweed, straw, starch, sugars, cellulose, bagasse, wool, pineapple waste, coconut waste, food manufacturing by-products and more. Whilst most of these industries are still very small scale, the potential for growth is significant and, given the right policy measures, achievable quickly. The advantages in terms of sustainability include lower GHG footprint in production phases , use of materials that would otherwise often have become wastes, and products being easy to recycle through composting, returning their carbon to the soil.

Product News

UK producer BIOME has announced that, following the interesting results for its tests on biodegradable tree guards, its products have now gone into commercial production. These reduce plastic contamination by biodegrading naturally into soils as they degrade over time, whilst fulfilling their role of protecting newly planted saplings.

UK producer FLOREON has announced the launch of its halogen-free flame retardant bioplastic, a high-performance alternative to flame retardant ABS. The halogen-free bioplastic, derived from plants, is suitable for chemical and mechanical recycling and has up to a seven times lower carbon footprint than oil-based plastic, making it a safe and sustainable option for electrical goods.

UK producer PLANGLOW has updated its range of compostable packaging materials available on the marketplace with packaging made for various events, locations and uses.

UK manufacturer PARKSIDE FLEXIBLE announced last month that it has worked with the chocolate company DIRTY COW to move to compostable flexible packaging.

UK butcher Westaway has replaced plastic cling film with compostable material. Owner Charles Baughan says, "There are over 400 million packs of meat products sold in the U.K. every year packed in plastic trays wrapped in films that cannot be easily recycled. I hope this ground-breaking innovation by our small team will challenge the whole sector. Here in South West England, we live in a wonderful part of the world, and we know that packaging does not always end up where it should. We feel strongly that doing nothing is not an option." In April of 2020, Westaway replaced the cling film with a three-layer blown coextrusion from Fabbri Group called Nature Fresh that is certified as compostable according to the EN 13432 Standard in both home and industrial settings. “We are the first ones in the world using Nature Fresh for meat products,” notes Baughan. He also proudly adds that the package was named Innovation of the Year in the U.K. Packaging Awards 2020 sponsored by Packaging News magazine.

UK supermarket chain LIDL has announced that from January 2022 it will be supplying only compostable fruit and vegetable bags in its UK stores, advising customers to re-use these as food waste bin liners. This follows a similar rollout from Waitrose on the F&V bags, as well as Aldi and Co-op on their compostable carrier bags. The more instruments citizens have to collect food waste cleanly, the more food waste we will get delivered to treatment and back to soil without plastic pollution.

Collection News

Italy is the EU’s largest marketplace for compostables with volumes exceeding 120KT in 2020, two-thirds of which are films – carrier bags, bin liners, fruit and vegetable bags. One fear of the waste and plastics industry is that compostables will contaminate plastic recycling streams, so the national packaging consortium (CONAI) undertook analyses across the country, which they presented this month. The results can be seen in the graphic below entitled “Percentage of bioplastic packaging found in the separate collection of plastics”.

The data is very clear – nationally there is about one per cent contamination of compostables in conventional plastics collected for recycling. Treviso, an area with particularly high levels of recycling (in excess of 80 per cent), shows contamination varying from 0.6 to 1.6 per cent. The decline in contamination levels over the months during which monitoring took place is partly attributed to national advertising and public information campaigns being undertaken by the national media, paid for by the new compostable EPR system BIOREPACK. The BIOREPACK system, established this year, is now beginning to function. Compostable packaging producers and distributors will contribute, in 2021, some €30 million to be spent on supporting the recycling of compostables through the organic waste stream and public education/information.

The one per cent contamination level is far below any threat to the quality of plastic recycling, quantified by CONAI to be between five and ten per cent depending upon the polymer type.

At the same time, plastic contamination of food and garden waste streams was reported this year by CIC, the national consortium responsible for the treatment of food and garden waste in composting and AD plants. CIC reported a national average of 3.1 per cent plastic contamination in 2020, with a cost to the system in extraction and disposal of between €100 and €120 million in 2020 alone. Italian compost and AD plants treated circa five million tons of food and two million tonnes of other wastes in 2020. Plastics contamination of biowaste streams, therefore, exceeds bioplastics contamination of plastic waste streams by 3:1. Sometimes, policymakers have the wrong focus.

In the UK, we are pleased to announce that ENVAR, in collaboration with Cambridge City Council, has developed what will be (we believe) the UK’s first on the go (street level) food and compostable packaging collection service, as per the Linkedin announcement shown below. ENVAR treats around 130KT of food and garden waste in its Huntingdon plant and another 200KT+ in its other IVC and AD plants around the UK, and has embraced compostables from an early stage, being the reference treatment plant for collections in many UK cities, especially for catering ware waste. Whilst DEFRA is still discussing whether compostables should even be considered 'recyclable' under new collection and EPR rules, ENVAR and Cambridge are showing that they can now, in reality, be collected and recycled. We hope other councils will follow suit – we don’t need to wait upon the Government in order to act.
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Brand News

Market pull for compostables is (as we said above) increasing daily. The paper published by the pressure group A Plastic Planet, entitled 'The Compostable Conundrum' , gives guidance to brands, designers, retailers, as well as policymakers, as to when best to use and not to use compostable packaging. It will not be welcomed by all – for some, it is too broad, and for others, too narrow, but the guidance will be widely used to define packaging choices.

The UK Plastic Pact has agreed that all tea bags, plastic coffee pods and bags, and sticky fruit and vegetable labels should be compostable as soon as possible. Just a few examples of major international brands adopting compostable packaging include – Pepsi Cola, which announced its first USA compostable packaging for the Frito-Lay® brand; Unilever and Kraft Heinz, which have confirmed their 2025 goal to 'Ensure that 100 per cent of our plastic packaging is designed to be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable'; Mars Wrigley, which has introduced compostable packaging for its SKITTLES® brand; Lavazza, which has made all of its plastic coffee pods compostable. BBIA sent a list of compostable packaging users in the UK to DEFRA this year, which includes a very large number of major UK brands.

BBiA Newsletter October 2021

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 12:57:39 GMT

Dear readers,

We can now expect the consultation processes on legislation relative to waste management, the EPR and DRS, within DEFRA to be extended until the end of 2021, and even into 2022, as DEFRA comes to conclusions and issues responses. This signifies that the debate is far from over about the most efficient and best-performing systems England (and the UK) requires to meet both waste targets and climate change commitments. The BBIA has presented evidence on how we believe food waste and compostable packaging should be handled, and we are continuing to push for a system that aims for the highest quality and quantity of biowastes to be transformed into energy and compost. Sadly, we still see unfathomable opposition from those happy to continue spreading plastics to soil, especially from among some AD operators.

As we enter the run-up to COP26, the question of the role material production can play in meeting GHG reduction targets has not been raised at all. Whilst the focus is on energy, we recall that 10 per cent of oil imported into the UK goes to producing materials. If we need to leave oil in the ground, then we need to start using renewable resources (plants and plant wastes) to produce many of the consumer goods (and packaging) we consume daily.

On November 24th, the BBIA will be presenting our industry in the House of Lords to MPs and Lords showcasing how UK companies are coming to market with these innovative materials and the barriers they face to entry.

Please enjoy the newsletter and the many reports and news contained.

David Newman
Managing Director

A letter from David Newman, MD of the BBIA

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 14:08:20 GMT

Dear readers,

Welcome back from the vacations and into a busy few months working on the policy issues outstanding here in the UK. The announcement on Friday 27 ^th August that DEFRA plans to introduce Single Use Plastic restrictions , following the consultations of Wales and Scotland, is a sign of the business ahead.

We further understand that the Government will now publish its findings on the three main consultation processes opened this year towards end of 2021 (DRS, EPR and waste collections consistency). A lot of discussion is therefore still going to happen to clarify ideas and approaches. BBIA’s contribution is continuous and we are working on getting our messages across through the Parliamentary processes as well as to civil servants.

As we will see from the many reports and news items in this newsletter, other countries are forging ahead faster than the UK to embrace the use of bio-based and biodegradable materials and reduce the impacts of certain single-use plastics. This is a pity because it means the UK will lose out on investments pouring into the sector as we have told both DEFRA and BEIS, but “there are none more deaf than those who will not hear”.

A new vision of the circular bioeconomy is being developed. The EU has recently consulted on theirs; Forbes reports on examples that are working already; the IPCC climate change report illustrates how the contribution that correct management of soil, farming practices and natural resources can help abate the climate disaster facing us.

It is to be hoped that the officials and politicians working on these issues succeed in looking at the bigger picture and not get tied down into the details when deciding upon the systems the UK needs to become carbon neutral in our lifetimes. Materials, renewable feedstocks, waste management, soil quality, climate and health are all interconnected.

David Newman
Managing Director

Here's to ending plastic soil contamination

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 11:45:33 GMT

Food waste and plastic contamination is not impossible to fix, and not one solution fixes all challenges. Plastic has its part to play, BUT when food is cooked on to a tray, what do you do? Currently if it's plastic it wont be recycled.

A simple option is to put both tray and food waste together into composting. We are fortunate to be able to do this at home in Eastleigh, but most people can't do it. However, in a couple of years, all household food waste will be collected.

Getting plastic out of the food waste stream is a major challenge in order to make plastic free soil enriching compost to feed the land and grow more crops. So, here's to ending one stream of plastic in soil contamination. We cannot burn our way out of dealing with this valuable bio waste when it has a part to play in feeding us all.

Clearing up compostables and littering

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 09:48:44 GMT

What's all the fuss about compostables and littering then?

Well, as these riji sugar cane trays show, fibre packaging even coated for moisture resistance will when filled with waste/soil break down when in the right conditions, it just needs moisture, a little warmth and microbial activity.

See, these trays above ground didn't magically disintegrate but the parts that were wet and within microbes reach disappeared.

So sending fibre to a composting system is great but throwing it on the ground is littering. Let's not get confused while we work to make dealing with food contaminated waste more effective, otherwise you could see yourself framed for rubbish dumping!

BBiA Newsletter August 2021

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 11:00:44 GMT

BBIA Managing Director bids a happy retirement to Iain Ferguson

At the end of July Iain Ferguson retired from his role at the Co-op as Environment Manager. He will be sorely missed by all of us. However, I heard through the grapevine that he will not be entirely withdrawing from our world and we can expect some news from him shortly on his future.

In this time, the Co-op has taken a lead on many environmental issues and the one dear to our members’ hearts is, of course, his support for the use of the right packaging materials in the right applications and his emphasis on the need to ensure all packaging is recyclable. His article published this month in the CIWM Circular Online journal explains the logic behind the Co-op’s move to sell only compostable lightweight carrier bags – their double use as a food waste caddy liner right in time for food waste collections coming to England post-2023 makes total sense. The societal cost savings are notable, especially for councils, which are always complaining about funding, and he calls for all lightweight carrier bags to be made compostable to drive quality food waste collections.

He has been busy writing this month. His article on why oxodegradable and 'biotransformed' plastics are not welcome was published in the IOM3 Materials World journa l .

On behalf of all BBIA members, the Board and friends, thank you Iain for your encouragement, engagement and honesty over all these years.

The newsletter brings you a number of very interesting reports that have been published over the last weeks as well as policy updates, which will provide you with ample holiday reading as you lounge on the beach or under the umbrella protecting you from the next downpour.

Wherever you are, I hope we meet soon.

David Newman
Managing Director

Keivn adds "Could not agree more, Iain has been a campaigning force that has played a large part in raising the Coop’s reputation for ecological advancement in the food industry, he has always been a gentleman to deal with."

Compostable or Biodegradable? Correct wording is key

Tue, 04 May 2021 13:12:16 GMT

BBIA have published a paper which attempts to create some clarity about the use of terminologies

There has been a lot of reference to biodegradable or compostable products and here we are pleased to provide a clear explanation from the BBIA (can be downloaded below) of what they mean and why we believe it makes sense for us to refer to riji as compostable.

Recently we published on LinkedIn , the results of our own composting experiment. We placed 1,000 riji trays (without the benefit of food attached (1) ) on an ordinary garden compost heap made of leaves, grass and weeds so that we could show the trays were being composted by nature. The pictures are shown below and demonstrate that the trays are home, and industrially compostable.

We are working with a University to establish certifiable results in order that we can declare them compostable within the OPRL (On Pack Recycling Label Organisation) scheme (2) .

Our aim is to have riji high temperature food trays returned to the soil through a composting operation, whether home or industrial, if collected by council authorities. This would create valuable soil enriching fertiliser that the UK needs for growing crops. It also deals with the thorny problem of how to manage food contaminated plastic food trays and films bags etc.

Plastic contamination in the environment is a big problem and needs a different approach from the 'carry on as before' status quo that we have relied upon for decades that has got us where we are.

We hope you see the sense in calling for change and can spread the word of this option of how to make a difference which is just one solution in the many that are needed to take care of this place we call home.

Footnotes

(1) Compostable packaging like food trays that have food attached benefit from the microbial activity within the food which helps break down food and natural materials like sugar cane fibre.

(2) OPRL have declared that plastic food trays like CPet that have food attached more than a 2D smear of gravy for example, that those trays cannot be recycled and are therefore sent for incineration or to landfill which loses the valuable bio nutrients of the food and the plastic for recycling.

It's COMPOST AWARENESS WEEK!

Tue, 04 May 2021 11:47:00 GMT

Benefits of Compost Highlighted During International Compost Awareness Week 2021

Compost organizations around the world have joined forces to highlight how composting can recycle carbon, help mitigate climate change and feed the soil. International Compost Awareness Week (2-8 May) showcases how recycling organic wastes into compost can benefit the environment and people by locking up carbon in soil, returning nutrients to degraded land while also supporting food security and improved nutrition.

Globally, composting currently:

• Recycles 83 million tonnes of biowaste every year.

• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents a year through storing carbon in soil and offsetting fertilizer use. This is equivalent to driving an average car for 36 billion kilometers (23 billion miles); almost 95 thousand times the distance between the earth and the moon!

• Recycles 1 million tonnes of plant macro nutrients, equivalent to EURO 702 million, CAD 1.1 billion or USD 807 million a year.

These annual benefits could be increased over 12-fold, if the world’s biowaste were collected separately and composted. To help bridge this gap, this year’s Compost Awareness Week will engage with thousands of volunteers around the world to hold educational activities, working together to get the word out about the many benefits of recycling organics and the importance of returning organic matter – compost – back to our soils.

Stefanie Siebert, Executive Director of the European Compost Network, said: “Composting organic wastes is a win-win solution. Not only does it reduce the harmful effects of leaving biowastes to rot in landfill sites or be lost through incineration, but it also helps keep soil healthy by promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Compost Awareness Week aims to communicate these benefits to people across the world.”

Percy Foster, Chief Executive of Cré: Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Association of Ireland said: “Compost is going to play a major role in regenerative agriculture with farmers trading soil carbon credits. Our sector looks forward to working with all in achieving this!”

Jenny Grant, Head of Organics and Natural Capital at the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA), UK, said: “Compost has multiple benefits. It is a brilliant soil improver, can increase organic matter, helps store carbon in soils and helps avoid the need for chemical fertilisers. By treating food and garden waste through composting, it also helps to mitigate climate change from avoided emissions. We encourage the separate collection of biowastes from householders and businesses to ensure we are able to maximise the benefits of these valuable resources.”

Massimo Centermero, Managing Director, Italian Composting and Biogas Association, said: “Since the 1990s, Italy has been composting increasing quantities of food waste, currently circa 5 million tonnes which represents 70% of all the food waste available in the country and about half of all food waste composted in the EU. We return about 2.5 million tonnes of high quality compost to soil, and in a country at risk of desertification, this contributes to resilient, long term agricultural security. The key to success is high quality inputs guaranteeing high quality outputs and technologically advanced plants capable of managing these wastes.”

Susan Antler, Executive Director of the Compost Council of Canada, noted that: “Research shows that compost supports crop productivity and can improve the nutritional content of vegetables grown in it. At a time when almost ten percent of the world’s population is exposed to severe food insecurity, compost is a natural and, with focus, accessible solution to improve both the quality and security of food for everyone.”

Frank Franciosi, Executive Director of the US Composting Council, added that: “As the USA nears the centenary of the 1930s ‘Dust Bowl’ caused by over farming and the loss of our country’s valuable soil organic matter, we would be wise to remember the importance of returning organic matter back to our soils, doing everything in our power to prevent a twenty-first century repetition of this disaster.”

Chris Purchas, Chair of WasteMINZ’ Organic Materials Sector group, said “Compost is an important part of the transition to a circular economy and the decarbonisation of New Zealand. This year as Aotearoa makes progress towards reducing our carbon emissions, composting will become an increasingly important part of the solution with many territorial authorities rolling out organic waste collections for their communities and businesses diverting organic materials to compost manufacturing.”

Peter Wadewitz, Chair of the Australian Organics Recycling Association, concluded that: “For something so fundamental, it is time for governments to step up and tear down the remaining obstacles to permit composting to deliver its full potential. Declaring strong near-term targets and clearing up government and regulatory policy uncertainties, improving compostable standards to reduce contamination from potential input materials and establishing government specifications and procurement practices for organic recycling products will boost our collective ability to build this complete environmental and economic success story.”

Kosher Arabia kicks off production in certified kosher facility

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 15:14:33 GMT

Kosher Arabia, a joint venture between Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC) and CCL Holdings, has become one of the first registered and certified producers of kosher food in the UAE with the opening of its catering facility in Dubai.

Offering “innovative solutions and tailor-made services”, Kosher Arabia will provide fresh, kosher meals to customers in the aviation, hospitality and events sectors across the Gulf region. The company commenced operations with a team of 20 dedicated culinary professionals, who have all been thoroughly trained in kosher food preparation, handling and serving.

With dedicated facilities located in Dubai World Central (DWC), Kosher Arabia’s production facility is reportedly equipped with the latest technologies and has a capacity of over 2000 meals a day. The company “stringently enforces” all health and safety regulations to guarantee a safe environment for staff and maintain the highest standards in food hygiene.

Kosher Arabia says that it is committed to using resources in a sustainable manner and minimising the environmental impact of its operations across all activities. Taking advantage of EKFC’s infrastructure, equipment and best practices, the company uses energy-efficient technologies, recycles waste where appropriate and offers innovative, eco-friendly packaging solutions.

Kosher Arabia general manager, Matt Rickard, said: “We are excited to launch operations in our new, state-of-the art facility. From a team of highly experienced, creative chefs to advanced technologies and reputable partners, we are well placed to lead the market and provide delicious and innovative kosher menus to our customers across the region. We will work hard to deliver world-class services and products through innovative and sustainable solutions, every day.”

Kosher Arabia is certified by the Kashrut Division of the Orthodox Union (OU) which continues to work in partnership with the South African Union of Orthodox Synagogues (UOS) to provide the “highest level” of excellence in kosher certification to Kosher Arabia. The company also uses certified suppliers to acquire the “very best quality” ingredients.

To read the original article - click here .

Dubai's Kosher Arabia is ready to serve up to 2,000 meals a day

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 14:51:01 GMT

Facility in Dubai World Central one of first kosher-certified catering providers in region

Dubai: The first meals are being served up by Kosher Arabia - the joint venture between Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC) and CCL Holdings - from its brand new catering facility in Dubai. It thus becomes one of the first registered and certified producers of kosher food in the UAE.

Kosher Arabia will provide fresh meals to clients in the aviation, hospitality and events sectors - including the Expo 2020 - across the Gulf. The company commenced operations with a team of 20 dedicated culinary professionals.

Located in Dubai World Central (DWC), Kosher Arabia's production facility has a capacity of over 2,000 meals a day. "From a team of highly experienced creative chefs to advanced technologies and reputable partners, we are well placed to lead the market and provide innovative kosher menus to customers across the region," said Matt Rickard, General Manager of Kosher Arabia.

CERTIFICATION PROCESSES

Kosher Arabia is certified by the Kashrut Division of the Orthodox Union (OU), which works in partnership with the South African Union of Orthodox Synagogues (UOS).

The company also uses certified suppliers to acquire quality ingredients. The procurement process is fully audited to ensure extreme hygiene levels and maintenance of the cold chain.

To read the original article - click here .

Interview with the Daily Echo

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 09:14:51 GMT

We were delighted to share the advantages of riji with readers of the Daily Echo

FOOD waste is one of the biggest issues in the climate challenge.

But after years of research, development and investment, a Southampton company is making a technological breakthrough in what could be a global game changer.

KCC Packaging of Eastleigh has developed a biodegradable food tray to replace the plastic ones that ready meals are supplied in.

In the UK alone that’s a staggering two billion meals a year.

Managing director Kevin Clarke said: “The main thrust of what we are doing as a business is developing an alternative for a high carbon product.

“We have been in research and development mode for a long time on a very difficult challenge which is how to find an alternative to the plastic ready meal tray.

“As mundane as that sounds, it has been a big task, because ovenable plastic has been around for 40-50 years. So have been working on a product that is compostable, sustainable and low carbon. We will have spent in excess of a million pounds on developing this over the past 15 years or so.”

This product is based on sugar cane.

The biggest marketplace for the existing plastic trays is, unsurprisingly, the supermarkets and they need a shelf life of 10-14 days.

Mr Clarke said: “When you have an uncoated sugar cane-based tray, it is going to be good for a day or two at best because the moisture in the food literally dissolves it.

“We have been working to find a way of bonding the surface and we are at a breakthrough moment now. Our product performs well and to a very high temperature and still remains compostable and recyclable.”

Mr Clarke said KCC has been campaigning hard for recyclable food trays to be collected by councils along with food waste.

“At the moment the plastic food trays are mainly going for incineration. There is a lot of talk about recycling, but it is not happening to any great extent.

“We are trying to give food producers and retailers the opportunity to move off the heavy dependency on this high carbon, plastic product which requires a lot of energy to make and is of course fossil-fuel based.

“Two billion plastic trays is a hell of a lot of product that is just getting burned.”

Mr Clarke said his trays would be more expensive “but it solves a huge environmental problem or at least this part of a very big problem.

“In fairness to the public I am sure that lots of people have been troubled by putting plastic trays into bins when they are pretty sure nothing good is going to happen to them. There is a growing awareness, especially since Blue Planet 2.

“That was a lightbulb moment and day by day that dimmer switch is turning things brighter and brighter and people are not accepting the status quo.

“There has been a huge amount of time, effort and investment is solving what might appear to be a simple problem.”

As KCC begins production, Mr Clarke said it was now a case of which retailers would ‘break cover’ first and switch products.

“I think it will be like the cork out of the bottle and when it starts to flow, it will be quicker and quicker.

“The future has got to be better than the mess we have got ourselves in, not just with plastic trays, but everywhere.

There have been ongoing (but slow) discussions with UK retailers and producers, but Mr Clarke said some of the company’s first success was likely come from exports, not in the UK.

He added: “We are very proud to be supplying a new business in the UAE called Kosher Arabia, who are in a joint venture with Emirates Flight Catering.”

So the sky may be the limit for this small but revolutionary product.

A Government committee is likely make recommendations on food waste and packaging tax in the coming weeks.

■ KCC Packaging is supported by NatWest whose chief executive Alison Rose has made climate change challenge one of her and the bank’s top priorities.

To read the original article - click here .

BBiA Newsletter April 2021

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 13:48:04 GMT

A word from David Newman on compostable packaging and the Government

Dear readers,

The industrial food giant Mars Wrigley announced in March that it was moving across to compostable packaging for its Skittles brand. Announcing this move, it said this 'represents a step to creating positive societal impacts and better environmental outcomes across the full life cycle of small flexible packaging'. Similarly, industrial food giant Unilever, a UK company, plasters our TV screens with adverts for its 'biodegradable' PG Tips teabags. Read the small print, they are compostable. And if you drink coffee, you couldn’t help notice how Lavazza, Europe’s third-largest coffee producer, is advertising its compostable coffee capsule. In April, a major UK retailer will make a ground-breaking announcement on the use of compostable packaging in its supermarkets.

These companies are applying the WRAP 2020 guidelines for the use of compostable packaging – where there is food likely to be recycled as food waste, compostables are the cleanest vector for that content back to biowaste treatment. There are many thousands of others, including here in the UK, using compostable packaging for their products because they understand the connection between food waste and packaging. Indeed, we saw the UK market grow around 20 per cent in 2020.

Yet the EPR consultation document issued by Defra in March appears to ignore the market move towards these materials as well as containing factual errors; it brushes aside the vision which BBIA and many others have made for a resource-efficient future. The Defra vision appears to include the continued spreading of thousands of tonnes of plastics to soil from the contamination of food waste streams. Meanwhile, Defra silently ignores the calls of 45 NGOs and leading retailers for the UK ban on oxo degradable plastics, banned in the EU.

All this within the context of a new report from UNEP and Oxford University that illustrates just 2.5 per cent of the global “build back better” funding is going to projects that will effectively have positive green outcomes. The Circularity Gap report for 2021 confirms that the global economy is becoming increasingly linear and less circular; despite all our conferences, seminars and discussions, business as usual goes on. It makes our job harder but it also should inspire us to know that some major brands are listening, even if the Government is not.

In this newsletter there is, as usual, a lot of content with news and events. I hope you enjoy some Easter holidays and look forward to getting back to meeting friends, colleagues and family in person in the near future.

David Newman

Managing Director

riji Relaunch!

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 13:42:27 GMT

99% natural, 100% vegan

We're on Instagram!

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 15:25:55 GMT

KCC have now joined Instagram! Why not give us a follow @kccpackaging and find out about our latest venture with Kosher Arabia

BBIA Policy Paper December 2020

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 12:56:57 GMT

The ten year perspective –food waste, packaging and compostables in the UK 2020-2030

As 2020 comes to a close, we look forward to the next 18 months in which the UK governments will

decide their policies around waste management and packaging that will influence investments over

the next two decades. Their objectives include:

- Creating efficient and consistent waste collection systems for householders and the private

and public sectors

- Rolling out food waste collections across England

- Reducing the plastic burden in composted material and digestates spread on land

- Improving control and management of plastics used in agriculture

- Introducing full cost Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) on packaging and potentially

other consumer products

- Introducing a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) on liquid containers including plastic, glass and

metals

- Promoting resource efficiency and especially reducing use of single-use plastics (SUP)

- Designing and delivering the infrastructure to recycle more waste, and compost more food

waste

- Reducing exports of plastic waste and reducing incineration

- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the sector to help meet net zero 2050

Please find more on these targets in the full policy paper here.

Embrace the advantages of compostables

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 12:48:49 GMT

Biowastes and similar biodegradable wastes are finally beginning to have their wider benefits recognised at a policy level.

These benefits, particularly those around carbon, can only be fully realised through their safe recycling back to soil. The fundamental question of how to collect has been answered – weekly separate collection – but the devil always lies in the detail and the questions now are much more nuanced. Their answers range from an understanding of systemic needs and benefits to ones of blinkered rhetoric which some might say deliberately miss the point. But what is that point exactly?

Resource strategy

Food and garden waste will become mandatory waste streams in England post 2023, but there is some concern that not enough focus is being put on the methodologies to ensure this biowaste is separately collected and treated. Above all, there is concern that the current practices that create high plastic contamination rates, which in the best case lead to increase processing costs but more often to low quality and polluting outputs, will continue and indeed rise. As food waste arisings entering treatment increase four or five fold, getting food waste collection and treatment right is vitally important to the whole resource strategy.

Compostables

Moreover, where compostable materials are concerned, we need to ensure these are used in the right applications and bring value to the system, avoiding cross-contamination and consumer confusion. Producers of compostable products already pay into PRN and future EPR schemes, but their “investments” are diverted away from their true destiny. These producers range from large multi-nationals to UK-based SMEs, and they all keen to have those payments contributing towards enhancing a system in which biowastes in general are valorised.

Compostables are often described as a carte blanche substitution to single use plastic packaging. This is looking down the telescope the wrong way. Compostables can indeed substitute plastic packaging, but only have sense when they can themselves drive food waste to composting and AD. This is our largest waste stream, the largest emitter of GHG in the waste sector, and one that requires significant investment in collection and treatment to get right.

Getting food waste into treatment properly means:

1. Simple to use and uniform across the country, to enable nationwide communications programmes and reduce procurement costs for councils;

2. With the least smell and fuss for consumers, so householders comply with the requirement to separately collect;

3. As much as possible. This means intercepting in the future as much as 100 kilos per inhabitant annually (two kilos a week) while working on food waste reduction targets too;

4. As cleanly as possible, so it can make gas and compost or digestate. This means with the least contamination possible, avoiding blockages and leaks of contaminants to soil;

5. With as much financial return as possible for the operators. In turn, this means least amount of contaminating waste to strip out and send to disposal, and the highest yields of gas and biofertilisers and composts possible;

6. With the best quality outputs possible so we can ensure a value driven marketplace for the compost and digestate produced.

Only by collecting biowastes with compostables can we ensure these objectives are reached. Plastics do not compost nor produce gas, and in organics are contaminants that should be collected for plastic recycling, not organics recycling. Compostable packaging, bin liners, carrier bags, bags, coffee pods, teabags, labels on fruit/vegetables, fruit and vegetable bags, magazine wraps and catering tableware can all be materials used to convey food waste to treatment where the packaging itself can biodegrade with the contents. This is the use of compostables – to enhance the production of biogas and biofertilisers and the reduction of contamination, and reduce plastic pollution in doing so.

Anaerobic digestion

We don’t want compostables contaminating plastics, although the statistical possibility is extremely low; similarly we don’t want plastics contaminating organics, as it does now – as much as 20% of all inputs to AD and compost are plastic packaging. So we need separate and clean streams. When there is cross contamination, technologies can sort it out, like the new plant opened by Jayplas shows.

AD operators attempt to strip out all packaging and indeed compostables too. But currently AD in the UK treats very only small amounts of household food waste – about 20% of what is coming along post 2023. The investments needed to treat those millions of extra tons can help the sector upgrade technologies and treat materials more efficiently, as many European and modern UK plants have demonstrated. This will also require an increase in scale of plants; today they are very small compared to what is needed.

If AD gets its head around recovering materials as well as biowaste, it is a win-win for the industry, cutting plastic waste, cutting disposal costs, improving yields, economic and environmental performance and producing new outputs like compost. To do this we need all food waste collected with one bag, compostable, so it can go either to IVC or AD. Counter-intuitively, this gives councils flexibility when collecting their food wastes – they are no longer tied to a specific treatment if all treatment accepts compostable bags.

Italy

The circularity of compostables is to be found in the circularity of food waste – as a vehicle to drive those biowastes to treatment cleanly, without plastic contamination. Has this been proven?

Take a look at the Italian case. Italy collects and treats two thirds of all the food waste collected and treated in the EU, including the UK and Norway. It has therefore a unique and exceptionally successful record. The Italians have plants treating 700,000, 550,000, 300,000 tons a year each – one plant in Milan treats more than all of England. Over 6 million tons of food waste is treated this year in Italy.

They banned the use of plastics in biowaste collections in 2010 and now have contamination rates of 1.5% plastics.

Compostable plastics are used for the collections but in many other uses such as fruit and vegetable bags, carrier bags, coffee pods, catering ware and so on. Data from their composting association shows that 80% of all the compostables put onto the market (around 120,000 tons) are actually effectively composted.

This is a remarkable piece of data because it shows that compostables fulfil their role – getting biowaste into treatment cleanly. As a result, the plants produce high quality compost outputs that sell on the market at prices UK composters dream of: €100 a ton and more. Above all, Italian users can be confident compost is beneficial. Today less than half of all UK AD and compost plants are PAS100/110 certified. Their outputs are classified as waste. This tells you a lot about what we are spreading to soil.

The amount of bioplastic used in Italy represents around 2% of the biowaste those materials collect and convey back to treatment. The proportion is clear – 1:50. Growth of food waste intercepted is matched hand-in-hand by the growth of bioplastics as collection tools.

Italy is ahead of all EU countries and the UK on food waste. But we are all going in that direction as post 2023 mandates come into force. What is the opportunity for us?

Questions for policymakers

The UK has the opportunity right now to realise this same potential as we go from small to mainstream food waste collections. The questions policymakers and the wider stakeholder community have to answer as food waste collections are rolled out are:

· Do we want to promote the incineration of plastic waste and the food stuck to it, as we are currently doing?

· Will we increase the transfers of financial resources from organic waste collection to incineration of the contaminants as now?

· Will the UK allow biowaste plants to be overcome by plastic as currently is happening?

· Will the UK allow biowaste plants to become terminals for what is essentially mixed waste as is currently happening?

· Will the UK permit the production of composts and digestate that contain so much plastics that farmers refuse to accept them, as is already happening?

If the UK is to answer ‘no’ to those questions, we must take the opportunity of ensuring that food waste collections are clean, can be treated, and produce quality outputs that have value for our soils. We need to establish a trajectory of quality – weekly separate collection – quality inputs, processes and outputs.

As Italy has shown, this requires simple legislation mandating collections with compostable packaging, a little enforcement to ensure councils do this, education to citizens to ensure compliance and an upgraded, modernised organics industry working together to handle new volumes and produce valuable products.

Appropriate deployment

In summary, when considered systemically and deployed appropriately, compostable products and packaging plays the role of:

1. A biolubricant for biowaste collections and treatment;

2. A reduction instrument, reducing plastic waste entering biowaste streams;

3. A plastic waste prevention instrument, substituting plastic where it does not fit;

4. A zero waste option, ensuring biowaste no longer goes to incineration but back to soil;

5. An instrument to drive the circular bioeconomy and protect our soils long term.

For the full paper related to this article, please visit the BBIA website reports page: www.bbia.org.uk/reports

by David Newman & Tom Breton

16 DECEMBER 2020

On letsrecycle.com

Please find the original article here.

WRAP caught up in degradable plastics row

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 11:45:04 GMT

More than 40 organisations including retailers and trade associations have written an open letter calling for a ban on plastics containing additives to make them degrade.

The open letter, sent to the media on 22 October, called on the government to “follow the lead” of the European Union, which is banning ‘oxo-degradable plastics’ from next year ( Directive, clause 15 ).

The open letter called on the government to “follow the lead” of the EU, which is banning ‘oxo-degradable’ plastics from next year

The letter comes in the wake of the development of a British Standards Institution (BSI) specification for measuring the biodegradability of polyolefins, published earlier this month. The specification, PAS9017, was sponsored by a company which produces biodegradable and compostable plastics and was developed by a steering group which included the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

Letter

The letter states: “The UK voted for the EU ban when it was proposed in 2019. Failing to act now could turn Britain from a leader into a laggard in fighting the plastic crisis.

“For these reasons, we call on the government to protect our environment, protect our food production, and protect British business by banning these materials immediately.”

It continues: “Increasing evidence shows that microplastics are entering the food chain through animals, fruits and vegetables. This impacts human health, soil health and biodiversity.

“Equally, these degradable plastic alternatives will disrupt the Britain’s recycling facilities, which will be unable to differentiate between conventional plastics and doctored alternatives.

“We call on the government to protect our environment, protect our food production, and protect British business by banning these materials immediately.”

Signatories include retailers Tesco, Aldi, Waitrose and the Co-op, as well as a number of trade associations, including the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) and the Environmental Services Association (ESA).

British Standards Institution

On 1 October the BSI published the new specification for measuring the biodegradability of polyolefins. Signatories to last week’s open letter claim the new specification supports the sale of oxo-degradable plastics. The letter reads: “The calls [for the ban] follow news that the British Standards Institution (BSI) enacted a new specification (PAS9017) this month supporting the sale of such plastics.”

The specification was developed by a steering group made up of WRAP, the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), amongst others.

PAS9017 sponsor Polymateria is a London-based privately owned technology company which develops biodegradable and compostable plastics. Polymateria has the backing of some heavy hitters in retail and manufacturing: one of its directors is retail expert Marc Bolland, who was previously at the helm of Morrisons and then Marks & Spencer. He spoke of the work done by Morrisons to remove plastic from its products at WRAP’s annual conference in 2009 ( see letsrecycle.com story ). Also on the company’s board is Frederic De Mevius of Planet First Partners, which has invested in Polymateria.

Polymateria is described as “a European advanced technology company developing a new standard in biodegradable and compostable plastics. Their scientists have created a breakthrough, proprietary formulation for plastics – called Biotransformation – that makes this possible in the natural environment if fugitive plastics escape from the circular economy.”

Surprise

Given the reaction following the publication of the specification, there is some surprise that WRAP has been involved in its development.

One perspective came from David Newman, managing director of the BBIA, who told letsrecycle.com: “We are in discussions with WRAP around communications in which their position on this standard will be made public.”

He continued: “What’s so sad about this is that it’s happening in the UK, which has promised to meet or go beyond environmental standards set by the EU.

“The EU has already put in a ban on these materials and the UK has not yet done so. This is damaging our international reputation.”

The BBIA aims to develop the circular bioeconomy in the UK, promoting markets and production of bio-based and biodegradable chemicals.

WRAP and Polymateria were approached for comment by letsrecycle.com. For WRAP’s response, click here.

Oxo-degradable material

Oxo-degradable material can be found in products such as plastic bags and contain an additive which helps the plastic to bio-degrade.

Those behind the technology say among the benefits are that it can help deal with waste which has escaped into the environment and cannot be collected for recycling or anything else.

In March 2019 the European Parliament approved measures aimed at tackling marine litter by limiting the use of disposable plastic. Restrictions prohibiting the placing on the market of oxo-degradable plastic are to come into force on 3 July 2021.

In March 2020, Wales proposed legislation banning oxo-degradable plastics as part of its single use plastic ban. [Clarification 27.10.20: this line has been changed from: ‘In March 2020, Wales introduced legislation to ban oxo-degradable plastics as part of its single use plastic ban’. Wales’s consultations on a ban have recently closed and no regulations have been introduced.]

by James Langley

26 OCTOBER 2020

On letsrecycle.com

Please find the original article here.

‘Kiss the Ground’ Regenerating Hope for the Climate

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 14:52:57 GMT

We at KCC have watched Netflix's new environmental documentary, 'Kiss the Ground'

Narrated by Woody Harrelson, Kiss the Ground focuses on soil and that if we take care of it, it can contribute to reversing the climate crisis.

Now, a documentary about dirt and soil may not be everyone's cup of tea but we at KCC found it interesting, engaging and perhaps, most importantly hopeful for what we could achieve to look after our planet.

We know we're biased but take a look at the trailer below, and give it a go.

KCC against ‘litterable’ plastics

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 08:56:33 GMT

Environmental organisations criticise BSI standard accrediting ‘litterable’ plastics

Environmental coalition Wildlife and Countryside Link and RECOUP have criticised a new standard for biodegradation of polyolefins.

The BSI’s PAS 9017:2020, Plastics – Biodegradation of polyolefins in an open-air terrestrial environment – Specification is a standard which seeks to support the use of a solution which allows for both conventional and non-conventional plastics to be littered in the open-air terrestrial environment.

Biotransformation technology firm Polymateria said its technology breaks down the most littered forms of plastic in real-world conditions and claims to leave behind zero microplastics.

Polymateria has recently secured £15m funding to accelerate rollout of its technology.

On a range of the most-littered forms of packaging – polyethylene and polypropylene – Polymateria has recently had independent third-party laboratory testing which achieved 100% biodegradation on a rigid plastic container in 336 days and film material in 226 days.

Additionally, it says the technology has also been proven at independent labs to have no impact on relevant recycling streams at scale.

The standard had a working title of ’Specification for the biodegradation of plastics in the case of littering in the natural environment’. This PAS is intended to enable claims of “biodegradable in the terrestrial environment” and essentially confirm that the material/product ‘is litterable’.

Leading waste and environmental organisations including RECOUP and The Environmental Services Association (ESA) wrote to the BSI, insisting this standard “will increase the prevalence of litter in all environments thus increasing the already unacceptable associated social, environmental and economic costs associated with litter. The act of littering is illegal and littered plastics are not only a huge societal burden but a resource lost from recycling and recovery”.

Wildlife and Countryside Link said the concept of being able to throw litter and assume it will biodegrade therefore supports the continued use of plastics in society at an unsustainable rate; “We do not support solutions where any plastic, even biodegradable plastic, ends up in nature” said the organisation.

Its main issues with the standard are that lab testing does not accurately reflect how these materials will perform in real-world conditions. A ban on oxo-degradable plastics enters into force in June 2021 across the whole EU under the Single-Use Plastics Directive. This includes the UK who voted for it in 2018.

It also supports a ban on the sale of “Oxo-degradable plastics (which) are conventional polymers (e.g. LDPE) to which chemicals are added to precipitate the oxidation and fragmentation of the material under the action of oxygen, accelerated by UV light and/or heat.”

The group added that the biodegradation of plastic covered by this PAS excludes key environments including “freshwater, marine, landfill and anaerobic environments of biodegradation” and does not account for “the effect of marine pollution, such as bioaccumulation of plastics and its effect on biodiversity”.

It said with the principles of a circular economy are also undermined , “Based on these points, we are unable to support the publication of this draft PAS and request that it is withdrawn”.

Wildlife and Countryside Link features 57 organisations including the CPRE, the Environmental Investigation Agency, Keep Britain Tidy, Greenpeace, and WWF-UK.

By Waqas Qureshi

15 September 2020

On packagingnews.co.uk

Please find the original article here.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation - "No one solution will work in isolation"

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 10:23:33 GMT

Time to rethink how we use plastics and solve the pollution problem, recycling is in amongst the answers it is not THE answer.

We have long been championing the compostable alternatives. Recycling will make a difference but not enough to keep using that as our only solution to this global problem.

We thank the Ellen MacArthur Foundation for emphasising all solutions need to come out of the shadows and work together.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The problem with plastic pollution starts long before plastic reaches our oceans, rivers and beaches, and so must the solutions. To solve plastic pollution, businesses and governments must act now.

Up until now, most efforts to tackle plastic pollution have either focused on improving waste management and organising clean-ups, or on introducing bans and plastic reduction.

None of these solutions will work in isolation: we cannot recycle our way out of plastic pollution, and neither can we simply reduce our way out of it.

#circulareconomy #stopplasticpollution #BreakingthePlasticWave

One size does not fit all.

Meet the startup tackling plastic waste with seaweed

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 10:42:09 GMT

We are proud to be partners with Notpla in the journey to help solve the plastic crisis

It’s brown, it’s slimy and it could be the answer to the world’s plastic problem. JustEat has been trialling it as an alternative to plastic takeaway boxes and sauce sachets; PepsiCo and Pernod Ricard have been using it to deliver product samples; it is saving sporting events and festivals from using hundreds of thousands of throwaway cups.

Brown seaweed is one of nature’s fastest-growing, most renewable resources. And the people behind London-based sustainable packaging startup Notpla have been using it to create revolutionary material that is compostable, edible and biodegrades naturally in four to six weeks.

Notpla’s mission is to make black plastic packaging disappear. This hasn’t changed since it was founded in 2014. Now, the six-year-old business is thinking about how it can build a brand that is akin to Lycra or Teflon where the name is also the material, and in a way that makes it easier for brands to understand what the product is and why it is different from biodegradable plastic.

“We’ve been on a journey in terms of brand to really try and communicate and represent the mission we have,” says Notpla’s co-founder and CEO Pierre Paslier. “One of the things that was really hard for us to explain before we changed the brand was what the product we were making was, why was it better or different industrially than biodegradable plastic.”

Notpla went by the name of Skipping Rocks Labs before it partnered with Superunion to develop a new brand architecture and brand. Paslier and co-founder Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez (who met in 2013 while studying innovation design engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art) liked the name but they felt it lacked the “meaning and future-proofing” it needed to become “the most sustainable packaging company brands can partner with”.

Paslier says moving to something as simple and bold as Notpla – “it’s just not plastic” – has already made it much easier to have those initial discussions with brands.

“There’s so much jargon in this packaging industry that people easily can confuse you about what it is,” he explains. “From the commercial discussions we’ve had, there is this feeling that people are relieved it’s not some kind of semi-greenwashing thing that is only going to do half of what it says on the can.”

Notpla has has three main product lines: Ooho sachets for liquids, a seaweed liner for coatings and films for solids.

Notpla teamed up with Just Eat earlier this year to launch the world’s first seaweed-lined box for the takeaway sector, an industry that is thought to be responsible for around 500 million plastic boxes each year – most of which end up in landfill. Notpla and Just Eat, in partnership with Unilever’s Hellmans, have also been piloting the use of seaweed-based sauce sachets.

“We are at the beginning of what we can do in that industry,” Paslier says. “As we grow and have more capacity we are definitely going to want to work with all the brands and platforms. That on-the-go market is where we have the best role to play. For example, with Pret, Costa and Starbucks, there is so much we could be doing with all the sandwiches and coffees and snacks that they sell immediately and then people consume it on the go.”

Notpla has sold more than 300,000 Ooho sachets so far, which is 300,000 fewer plastic cups or bottles entering the environment.

By using Notpla’s Ooho sachets at the London Marathon last year, Lucozade was able to make all of its hydration stations plastic-free and reduce carbon emissions by 80% per unit compared with a plastic cup.

But Notpla’s products are giving brands a lot of bang for their buck too. Scottish whisky brand Glenlivet charged £5 per pod of whisky at London Cocktail Week, while a Lucozade campaign received £1m worth of media for a couple of races.

“We certainly didn’t charge that,” Paslier says. “What these brands who are actively working on sustainability have realised is they can easily work with their marketing budgets to fund a slightly more premium trial period of that new packaging before completely committing to it.”

The material Notpla uses is cheap because seaweed is so abundant. Currently what costs more is Notpla’s machines, which are are still prototypes and need a lot of engineers. This means the production cost is more expensive and premium than plastic.

Notpla believes it will be able to compete with plastic directly within a few years as it improves the efficiency of its machines.

“In the meantime, the actual perceived value is the reason why brands don’t mind too much whatever price we give them because that works out for them quite well,” Paslier says.

Based on the conversations it has had with brands, Notpla says some – particularly beverage companies – are worried that working with a brand that is so vocal about being “not plastic” will highlight how much plastic they really use.

Notpla wants to make it clear that it isn’t against all plastic.

“Plastic has a role to play but only in places where you’re going to use the most of the material, not for things that are going to be used in five minutes, thrown away and end up in the ocean for hundreds of years,” Paslier explains.

“For the medical industry we absolutely need plastic because it’s saving lives, there is no question about this. That’s what we are able to say to brands: if you want to keep on using plastic in a responsible way you do that with whoever, we are here to provide an alternative.”

Acceleration, replication and Covid-19 testing

As a “from-the-ground-up brand” that started with people liking videos on Facebook, Notpla is keen to keep its grassroots edge and it is discerning about the businesses it chooses to work with. Paslier says there are a lot of businesses that Notpla hasn’t actively worked with because it feels it will be more of a risk than anything.

“If a brand is just interested in making a bit of an announcement and not trying to do something long term about it, that’s not a good sign for us,” Paslier explains.

“If the activities of a beverage company, for example, are clearly having lots of negative societal impacts, we don’t want to give them the option of shifting the discussion to something else. Sometimes it’s hard because you think [some brands] could have such a huge impact if they change this and that but at the same time you also have the counter-argument that they haven’t been seen to change for 25 years, making announcements and not doing anything.”

Notpla hasn’t done much of its own marketing or communications to-date. With only three machines in its East London site, it is mindful there is only so much it can produce and it does not want to make a big announcement and not be able to deliver more products than its engineers and chemists can physically do.

“We’ve actively tried to maintain a balance between the amount of publicity we do and the amount of engagement we can do, it’s going to be a soft continuous growth of the brand,” Paslier says.

“From the beginning we’ve been really built from viral videos, social media, so we tend to work on a very direct relationship with consumers. We mainly communicate on social media, we try to be as authentic as possible from that aspect. Our partners usually go more full-on when they announce or launch something and it’s worked quite well to work hand-in-hand as a partner with them.”

Notpla worked with JustEat’s marketing department to create joint branding for the seaweed-lined boxes, as well as a few videos explaining what the partnership is about.

“That was a nice first interaction with another marketing department of another company and working together to create some joint assets,” Paslier says. “It was exciting to see them working closely to our brand.”

Notpla is now thinking about building its own marketing team within its tight-knit group of 25 who “strongly believe they can change something about this plastic crisis”. These plans have been slightly waylaid as a result of Covid-19 but the intention is to bring somebody on full-time to focus on the marketing. It is also looking to strengthen the commercial team now it has the capacity to produce more.

Paslier says Notpla has been “busier than ever” since the onset of the pandemic and has been having conversations with a number of large US groups.

“People are really realising that we are not going to go back to normal, we have to be more sustainable and the brands are actually really giving that signal from the top level,” he says. “It’s super exciting that this is a big signal that we can’t keep on mistreating the world like we have.”

The pandemic could work in Notpla’s favour in another way too. Recent studies show that the coronavirus can stay alive on plastic for nine days. Notpla has started to reach out to labs to analyse its films because it believes this could be a “big added value” if it emerges that nature is able to withstand the virus better than synthetic materials.

“Where plastic has been seen as the most perfect solution for a very long time, we are actually realising that it’s not,” Paslier says. Notpla has applied for a government grant to test the antiviral properties of its films, which will accelerated the coronavirus-related testing if it is approved.

2020 is going to be the year Notpla “accelerates and replicates” the product hub it has in East London across different cities. The aim is to have lots of local hubs that produce for their local environment because – with the environment always front-of-mind at Notpla – that means it can reduce the transportation even further.

“Is our goal to make the most money?,” Paslier says. “No, because we want to replace as much plastic as we can.”New Paragraph

Please see the original article by clicking here

STOP the Government putting more plastic in our environment

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 10:12:17 GMT

Join the cry to get to grips with plastic waste, please read and sign our petition http://chng.it/4Ghr7kgV2x

http://chng.it/4Ghr7kgV2x

Why bother?

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 14:55:52 GMT

When the government has just created an incentive for plastics producers to capitalise on new recycling rules at the expense of the earth’s resources, why bother investing in natural alternatives?

Having spent over four decades working in an industry where it has been all about chasing ever reducing price levels, it is great to be on the front line of public consciousness, with a mandate to deal with packaging waste and in particular plastic pollution in our environment.

Or is it?

Old habits die hard. Even the sustainability managers for big organisations frequently put lowest cost deliverables at the top of the agenda, when by their very job description, sustainability should lead the way.

I get it, the market is competitive, the retail chain needs to stay lean

Or is that really it?

The plastics industry has been 70 years in the making, and has huge scale advantage over fledgling sustainable alternatives that promise a bright future because they come from nature. These alternatives might be corn or potato starch, seaweed or wood cellulose or fibre materials like sugar cane, straw and bamboo.

Is it right to expect these alternatives to compete on a level playing field on cost, when clearly the scale just is not there yet?

Well, believe it or not it gets worse.

The UK government in an effort to reduce plastic waste by incentivising woefully low recycling rates intends to tax plastic packaging that does not have a 30% recycled content, including those made from sustainable non-oil-derived compostable sources.

This is ill-advised for two major reasons:

• Firstly, the ability to track and trace recycled content in plastic material is almost non-existent, so any producer wishing to state that their product contains 30% recycled plastic is able to state it with impunity because who can disprove it?

What’s more, recycled materials are trading at significant cost levels above virgin raw material, and this is particularly so with the slump in demand for oil due to the pandemic.

That means simply there is an incentive to bend the rules and incorporate either a higher rate of virgin material or even use 100% virgin, wave a magic wand over it and call it recycled to get a huge margin increase by selling at a premium and buying at a discount.

For producers all too often squeezed to lower costs, continually HMG are putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

• Secondly, compostables cannot incorporate recycled plastic because err, they are not plastic. If you could incorporate it, it would mean they can no longer be compostable which by EU definition is a form of recycling, in this case back to mother nature.

So, is it better to not use compostables because plastics need to be recycled?

Of course not!

You only have to watch Blue Planet 2 and hear Sir David telling us what is really happening in the world to know that things have to change and in a big way, or we will all end up in a poorer environment. Recycling is a part of the answer; it is not the answer to everything.

Compostable material alternatives need to be encouraged not penalised! For goodness sake HM Treasury! Understand that taxing the new born is going to stifle the birth rate. Do we really want to be talking about what we should have done years ago about tackling plastic packaging waste instead of taking positive leadership steps to show the rest of the world how the UK can lead in this area?

Kevin Clarke MD KCC Eastleigh

Chartered Environmentalist.

Accredited Packaging Professional.

Fellow of the Institute of Packaging.

OxoDegradables Open letter

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 12:26:58 GMT

An open letter to the Secretary of State regarding the ban on Oxodegradable products - KCC is part of the BBIA

The Rt Hon George Eustice

Secretary of State

Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

Marsham Street,

London SW1P 4DF

June 1st 2020

Dear Secretary of State,

Re: oxo degradable/oxo biodegradable/oxo fragmentable plastics

We the undersigned associations call upon the Government to implement a total ban on the use, sale

and distribution in the UK of conventional non-biodegradable plastics containing additives, which are

meant to accelerate the fragmentation of plastics into microplastics. Such plastics are variously known

as “oxo degradable”, “oxo biodegradable” “oxo fragmentable” “bio-assimilable” but the definitions

are not exhaustive (1) .

The UK voted for the European Single Use Plastics Directive (Directive 2019/904 https://eurlex.

europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019L0904&from=EN ) which includes the

clause at Article 5 that “Member States shall prohibit the placing on the market of the single-use

plastic products listed in Part B of the Annex and of products made from oxo-degradable plastic.”

Whilst the UK has left the EU we have retained the ambition to achieve at least the equivalent of

European environmental norms. At the same time, were the UK to allow these plastics, anything

containing them or packaged in them could not be exported to EU markets.

The ban on the use of oxo additives regards not just the EU. The USA also has effectively stopped the

sale of such additives by adjudging that the use of marketing terms such as biodegradable for plastics

using these additives is considered misleading. Companies have been fined for using such terms and

as a result these additives are not used in the USA. (2)

Why should this ban be implemented now?

As the UK is now in the process of revising legislation on the use of plastic packaging, now is the time

to act. Overwhelming scientific evidence, including research commissioned by DEFRA (3) and the EU, has

demonstrated beyond doubt that the claims these additives transform polyolefin plastics into

biodegradable plastics are unfounded. It is scientifically well-known that all polyolefin plastics are

naturally prone to oxidation under environmental conditions (aging). Such oxidation ultimately leads

to fragmentation and formation of microplastics, which build up in oceans and in soil.

The "oxo-additives" are designed to accelerate the natural oxidation of polyolefins, causing an early

fragmentation and the fragmentation of plastic products into microplastics. Thus the effect of these additives (if any) is merely to accelerate the conversion of macroplastics into microplastics, not solving the global problem of plastic pollution but worsening it.

Even the claimed disintegration effectiveness is questionable, under some environmental conditions.

Experiments undertaken by the University of Plymouth (4) in 2019 showed that plastic films claiming to

be “degradable” due to the oxo additives in them, remained intact in the sea and in soil after 3 years.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority in 2019 also found that the use of the term “biodegradable”

for dog poop bags made from oxo plastics were misleading as after 2 years these bags were still

undegraded. (5) Nevertheless, they are still sold in the UK.

Moreover, such plastics are not recyclable as the powders contained in them assist degradation and

therefore render instable plastic polymers when recycled together. These plastics are also not

compostable and lead to confusion among consumers and retailers who consider them to be

biodegradable as if they were compostable.

A very wide coalition of signatories including some of those signing here, led by the Ellen Macarthur

Foundation, called for a ban as long ago as 2017 that was reiterated in 2018 (6). That is attached. We

wish to remind you of the call from the Foundation and reiterate it ourselves here.

Whilst we in the UK are ourselves introducing national bans on single use plastics now is the time to

also ban the scourge of plastic fragments deriving from oxo additives. We hope you will act quickly to

implement this ban in the UK without further delay and respect the undertaking the UK voted for

when this issue was raised in the EU.

Yours sincerely,

Signatories (in alphabetical order)

ABBA

ADBA’s members include AD plants that receive food waste and the use of oxo degradable bags is a

contaminant they have to extract and landfill or incinerate.

BBIA

BBIA’ members are producers of certified compostable plastics and packaging whose industries are

damaged by competing against uncertified and unsubstantiated claims of biodegradability such as

those from oxo manufacturers.

ESA

The ESA’s members include the major UK waste companies that receive but cannot recycle or compost

oxo degradable plastics, increasing the landfilling and incineration of them and disrupting plastic

recycling.

FPA

The FPA’s members serve food and drink to the public and the use of oxo degradable materials reduces

the possibility of recycling or composting those containers.

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organisation, which uses non-violent, creative

confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and to force the solutions which are essential

to a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace's goal is to ensure the ability of the earth to nurture life

in all its diversity.

A Plastic Planet

A Plastic Planet is a UK organisation campaigning for the reduction of plastic use and waste.

REA

REA’s members include companies who compost food, garden and compostable packaging waste and

who similarly anaerobically digest food waste and all have to extract and dispose of oxo degradables.

RECOUP

RECOUP are a cross sector member based charity working across the plastic value chain to improve

UK plastic resource efficiency and recycling.

(1) We refer to any plastics to which additives are put in the master batches which disintegrate plastics into

fragments and microplastics and which are not certified as “biodegradable” under the standards recognised within UK law such as BSI 13432, BSI 14995, BSI 17033.

(2) https://www.khlaw.com/2313

(3) http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0

&ProjectID=16263

(4) https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/biodegradable-bags-can-hold-a-full-load-of-shopping-three-years-afterbeing-

discarded-in-the-environment

(5) https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/ancol-pet-products-ltd.html

(6) https://www.newplasticseconomy.org/about/publications/oxo-statement

A letter from the BBIA - April 2020

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 13:29:04 GMT

To read more news from the BBIA, just click here

Dear readers,

A time of great paradoxes, a time when history is written and when “all the balls are up in the air” is how Tony Blair described 9/11. Lockdown, for me, the word which describes 2020.

Many face ruin, others are overworked, and not just our heroic health care workers, but also our packaging plants, distribution centres, food suppliers, retailers and waste managers. And keeping it all flowing is the internet, connecting us to colleagues, loved ones and events online 24/7. Think what life would have been like if this had happened in 1990.

The opportunity to remodel our economies is sitting right in front of us: the trillions we will invest over the next year to save our economies should now be directed into the transition to a circular, green, bioeconomy and not in supporting Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil and other bastions of the old, polluting model. This is sadly the route the US is taking. If the virus teaches us anything, it is that the destruction of nature eventually kills us too. Now is the time to use our taxpayer money to retool, re-equip and remodel our economies fit for the next century. The virus has shown that it was easy to reduce pollution, easy to reduce emissions, possible to coexist with wildlife, possible to slow down. We all knew our lives were unsustainable. Covid-19 just confirmed that.

Naturally, we are working from home too and connecting with many of you on a daily basis. Our plans are disrupted as are everyone’s – the climate change conference COP26 has been postponed and that gives you an idea of the level of disruption there is. But engagement goes on and life continues. I hope you are safe, well and that we meet again on the other side of this.

Best wishes,

David Newman

Managing Director

Please find out more about the BBIA by clicking here

Green expectations | Special report – bioplastics

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 11:50:18 GMT

With consumers increasingly intent upon making sustainable purchasing decisions, the adoption of bio-based packaging solutions should be very much in tune with the times, reports Des King.

Around 50% of the five million tonnes of plastic currently in circulation throughout the UK each year is used for packaging; maybe a quarter of which gets recycled. This compares pretty well with the proportion of waste to consumption worldwide, which could be as much as 90% of total production. As the graphic images that have dominated media coverage over the past two years have illustrated only too clearly, it’s the material’s principal attributes in withstanding everyday wear and tear that are likewise its biggest disadvantages in effecting its disposal. Ironically, it’s quite simply too fit for purpose.

Hitherto, the bio-based sector has maintained a relatively low profile whilst the public debate has raged post-Blue Planet; wisely so since whether that plastic detritus polluting the oceans has been made from fossil-fuel or plant-life it’s still just as much a hazard to marine life. With the focus extending to the more critical concerns over climate change, however, and as the retail supply chain comes to terms with the sheer impracticability of abandoning plastic packaging over the foreseeable future the time couldn’t be more propitious for it to set out its stall as the go-to resource for a more sustainable direction of travel going forward.

Small worldwide capacity

On face value, however, the stats would suggest that this is easier said than done. Global production capacity of bioplastics was 2.11 million tonnes in 2019, and is expected to reach 2.43 million tonnes by 2024. Despite an upwards 21% growth rate, interim forecasts are comparatively sluggish with uplifts of 1.6-0.9% predicted respectively for 2021 and 2022. Plus it still only represents less than 1% of all plastics produced annually.

Even so, future prospects look promising. At the annual European Bioplastics conference (EuBP) held at the end of last year (Berlin: 3-4 December 2019), over 400 delegates drawn from 230 companies and over 50 countries worldwide were told by EuBP chairman Francois de Bie: “It is a pivotal time for our industry as the European Union (EU) is serious in developing from a linear to a circular economy.

This provides us with a unique growth opportunity. The new EU Commission recently announced a Green Deal for Europe and bioplastics will play a crucial role in helping to achieve it. To reach circularity and fossil-decarbonisation, it’s important to create a strong link between the bio and circular economy.”

Single-use plastic packaging has attracted most of the flak with legislation and guidelines rushed through to restrict its application – and with the newly appointed EU Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, speculating that a general ban on all plastic packaging in Europe might be the optimum solution. Not only would this be too draconian a measure to ever gain support, it also flouts the growing acknowledgement that switching to other formats won’t necessarily reduce our CO² footprint. Glass bottles are heavier than plastic to transport. Paper bags not only have higher carbon emissions than plastic bags, but are also limited by the times they can be re-used.

Whilst reduction informs most of the measures being adopted, it is very much tied to consumption so volumes of packaging will inexorably rise, with as much as 500 million tonnes of plastic predicted to be in circulation by the end of the decade. For the proportion of it that can’t be recycled a practical solution could be to make it compostable.

Contrary to the Commissioner’s ‘Gordian knot’ approach, it’s a possibility that more sanguine voices within the EU are beginning to express. For example, having been almost entirely disregarded within the Single Use Plastics directive (SUP) hastily rushed through by the EU just over 12 months ago, there are now clear indications of a more conducive attitude towards ways in which compostables can make a positive contribution; not least its potential role in combating marine environment now timetabled for full evaluation by 2027.

There is, however, some understandable impatience with what seems to be muddled thinking coming out Brussels. “The whole problem with EU commissions is that there’s a complete and total schizophrenia,” says Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) managing director David Newman.

“On the one hand they’re spending billions of euros into researching innovative materials and ways of treating them or reusing waste for making bioplastics – and on the other hand you’ve got the environment directorate treating compostables as though they were micro-beads or any other single use plastic. There’s absolutely no market pull for the materials that they’re investing in producing. And when you challenge them they just say ‘well bioplastics are plastics as well so why should we privilege them when what we want to do is to reduce plastics’.”

Waste stream

In the UK, WRAP is expected to countenance a role for compostable materials in packaging streams and also as a way of reducing packaging waste where it’s difficult to recycle. Across the Channel too, some EU member states are making their own decisions irrespective of what’s discussed in Brussels – for example Austria, which has notably excluded biodegradable solutions from its ban on single-use plastic bags being introduced this year. Further afield, a clear distinction has been drawn between bio and non-degradable plastic by China in recent measures announced in respect of its single-use packaging, and where a concomitant reduction in the volumes of the 6.7m metric tonnes of HDPE that it imports, and the further 7.2m metric tonnes it produces itself, look certain to provide a boost for a bio-PE drop-in.

The bio-based sector still needs to walk a bit more briskly, however, before it breaks into a full-scale tilt towards an enlarged market share. “We have to get this into perspective,” notes Newman. “There are 350 million tonnes of plastic out there – and it could be 500 million tonnes by the end of the decade – of which maybe two million tonnes is bio-based; half of which is compostable. And OK that could be 5 million tonnes by the end of the decade, but the simple fact is that the annual increase in the production of plastic is going to be more than the increase in the production of bioplastics for the next decade.

“This is a tiny part of the overall packaging scene. We have to focus on making materials that are actually useful and beneficial to the whole system rather than serving the ends of someone who just wants to incorporate some green-washing within their marketing strategy.”

In the meantime, UK suppliers are benefiting from the rising tide of interest in bio-based solutions, says Newman. “If you talk to all my members they’re sold out. Their material is not necessarily going to the Unilevers and the P&Gs of this world, but the SMEs that are taking it up do cumulatively total up to volumes. The question is whether that’s enough for the industry to be able to capitalise on it and invest in large-scale production.

“PLA is sold out; you won’t be able to get a kilo of PLA this side of 2022. As for other materials, well Novamont are putting in a new plant and even before that comes on stream they’ve sold out capacity. The industry’s doing very well; it’s growing and it’s working at capacity. But will it make a huge impact on plastic packaging yet? No, it won’t.

“It’s about where price is not the single biggest issue. The bigger brands are competing down to a fraction of a penny; a new brand is more focused on image and the ethical values it reflects. A cent more is not really going to matter.”

In distancing themselves from their fossil-fuel competition, compostables still have their work cut out in really explaining to consumers the benefits it brings. It’s an issue BBIA will be addressing in the spring through a programme of street interviews outside of Co-op stores, where shopping bags are sold as compostable bin-liners for food-waste collection.

“People actually do understand what all this is about,” says Newman.” If you do the right education/communication, you get the right results. By the same token if you think people are going to get it simply because you’ve put it on the market then you’re just fooling yourself aren’t you.”

The length of time the process can take is a further potential bone of contention amongst the sector’s critics, not least in relation to shaping consumer attitudes towards waste disposal; one of the reservations raised in drafting the EU’s Single Use Plastics directive (SUP) a year ago, notes the European Commission’s Werner Bosmans. “Biodegradability is seen by too many people – and that includes politicians – as a silver bullet. It isn’t; nor should it ever be taken as a license to litter.”

It’s a premise that Newman strenuously refutes. “There is not one piece of evidence which suggests that the myth is real at all. If people are going to litter then quite frankly it isn’t going to make any difference what the packaging is made of.”

Please find the original article by clicking here

Compostable packaging | Tesco is “setting itself against a tide”

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 15:00:26 GMT

David Newman, managing director of the Bio-Based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) looks at supermarket giant Tesco’s recently updated guidelines on its preferred materials and formats which they will accept as packaging, saying Tesco is “setting itself against a tide which will only become more powerful”.

Tesco have recently issued an updated series of guidelines on the preferred materials and formats which they will accept as packaging. In these updated guidelines Tesco have included all compostable materials in their Red list under the category of packaging “Not to be used as customers cannot easily recycle (UK)” .

Tesco explain this decision as an attempt to simplify the decisions customers have to make over how to recycle their packaging when they take it out of the store.

By reducing the number of packaging options open to their supply chain, and simplifying material choices, they hope to be able to communicate with consumers more easily on how to recycle those materials and use materials which are more easily recyclable given the existing UK collection infrastructure.

By refusing to use this packaging, Tesco is setting itself against a tide which will only become more powerful as consumers understand that they cannot recycle many of the plastics Tesco is compelling suppliers to use.

"Tesco also state that their position will change as infrastructure matures and this decision reflects just their current thinking."

Whilst we understand their desire to simplify what is a complex, international supply chain, we respectfully disagree with their choice. As the Plastic Pact (to which Tesco are signatories) made clear in guidelines for the use of compostable materials, published on February 6th 2020, there are certain uses for which plastics are simply not suitable.

These currently include teabags, coffee pods, sticky labels on fruit and vegetables, ready meal trays and food caddy liners and that list continues to grow as collections and market uptake develop.

It is obvious to any observer of the waste infrastructure in the UK (but also across the globe) that almost all plastic films are currently not being collected for recycling nor effectively recycled. In fact less than 5% of plastic films in the UK are sent to recycling with an ambition in the Plastic Pact to raise this to just 7% by 2022.

Compostable films therefore, are in exactly the same position as these materials relative to consumer choices: when a consumer takes them home and disposes of them their choices are still going to be limited. The difference is, many compostable films can be home composted easily whilst the 52 industrial composting plants in the UK will also accept them if they are collected and sent to these for treatment.

Conversely, the Environment Agency shows that many plastic films are polluting food waste collections and ending up in our soils and water through composting and biogas treatment and is consulting over how to stop this happening.

The development of the collection and treatment infrastructure is an issue which concerns the whole supply chain, from producers to waste management through consumers and retailers. We call upon Tesco to work within the Plastic Pact and with the BBIA to help develop the collection infrastructure for compostables which will mature as food/garden waste collections become obligatory across the UK in 2023.

They might want to recall that, according to a recent study published by University College London, 84% of consumers prefer to purchase products in compostable packaging. By refusing to use this packaging, Tesco is setting itself against a tide which will only become more powerful as consumers understand that they cannot recycle many of the plastics Tesco is compelling suppliers to use.

Please find the original article by clicking here

BBIA criticises Tesco’s new ‘no compostables’ packaging strategy

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 14:44:04 GMT

Trade body Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) has issued its response to Tesco’s recently released packaging strategy, calling on the supermarket giant to drop its opposition to compostable packaging and help develop the collection infrastructure for compostables in the UK.

“They might want to recall that, according to a recent study published by University College London, 84% of consumers prefer to purchase products in compostable packaging.”

Trade body Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) has issued its response to Tesco’s recently released packaging strategy, calling on the supermarket giant to drop its opposition to compostable packaging and help develop the collection infrastructure for compostables in the UK.

Tesco unveiled its new 2020 packaging strategy last month. Viewed by Bio Market Insights, the document maintains that materials such as compostable, oxy/oxodegradable, PLA, and black plastic should be under a ‘red list’ and not be used for its packaging because “customers cannot easily recycle” them in the UK. However, the strategy from the retailer green lights rigid materials like glass, PET, HDPE, PP, cardboard and paper, as it says that these items can easily be recycled at “kerbside” in store.

Tesco (@Tesco) explain this decision as an attempt to simplify the decisions customers have to make over how to recycle their packaging when they take it out of the store. By reducing the number of packaging options open to their supply chain, and simplifying material choices, it hopes to be able to communicate with consumers more easily on how to recycle those materials and use materials which are more easily recyclable given the existing UK collection infrastructure. Tesco also state that their position will change as infrastructure matures and this decision reflects just their current thinking.

In a statement, BBIA (@bbia_uk) said it “respectfully” disagreed with Tesco’s choice, adding: “As the Plastic Pact (to which Tesco are signatories) made clear in guidelines for the use of compostable materials, published on 6 February 2020, there are certain uses for which plastics are simply not suitable. These currently include teabags, coffee pods, sticky labels on fruit and vegetables, ready meal trays and food caddy liners and that list continues to grow as collections and market uptake develop.

“It is obvious to any observer of the waste infrastructure in the UK (but also across the globe) that almost all plastic films are currently not being collected for recycling nor effectively recycled. In fact, less than 5% of plastic films in the UK are sent to recycling with an ambition in the Plastic Pact to raise this to just 7% by 2022. Compostable films therefore, are in exactly the same position as these materials relative to consumer choices: when a consumer takes them home and disposes of them their choices are still going to be limited.

“The difference is, many compostable films can be home composted easily whilst the 52 industrial composting plants in the UK will also accept them if they are collected and sent to these for treatment. Conversely, the Environment Agency shows that many plastic films are polluting food waste collections and ending up in our soils and water through composting and biogas treatment and is consulting over how to stop this happening.

“The development of the collection and treatment infrastructure is an issue which concerns the whole supply chain, from producers to waste management through consumers and retailers.”

BBIA added that it called upon Tesco to work within the Plastic Pact and with the BBIA to help develop the collection infrastructure for compostables which it claimed would “mature as food/garden waste collections become obligatory across the UK in 2023”.

BBIA maintained: “They might want to recall that, according to a recent study published by University College London, 84% of consumers prefer to purchase products in compostable packaging. By refusing to use this packaging, Tesco is setting itself against a tide which will only become more powerful as consumers understand that they cannot recycle many of the plastics Tesco is compelling suppliers to us.”

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We are removing all unnecessary and non-recyclable materials from our packaging and will remove one billion pieces of plastic from our products in UK stores. To help us reach these targets we have reviewed the materials used in our packaging and have developed a preferred material list.”

Please find the original article by clicking here

The Case for Compostables

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 09:35:30 GMT

Responding to a recent Footprint story on the problems with compostable packaging, David Newman, of the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association, argues that it has an important role to play.

Footprint does a great job of exposing flaws in our food, packaging and waste systems. Last month it targeted compostable packaging , but I think some of the comments were unfair and I want to correct the balance.

When we see that compostable packaging – even in well-run, closed-loop facilities like the Scottish and UK parliaments – is ending up incinerated, it is enough to make my blood boil. It shows opponents of compostables they are a waste of time and we should continue to use plastic materials (that is, those that should be recycled, but rarely are), while people like me who think compostables have a role to play are left disappointed because they are not playing it and valuable resources are being burnt.

There are a few essential points I need to make.

First, compostables can play a role in getting packaging that is contaminated with food and drink to composting, where such materials can be recycled and sent back to soil, to replenish its organic carbon and help raise the quantity and quality of that organic carbon. We are losing around 3m tonnes a year of topsoil in the UK to erosion, while food waste is our largest domestic waste stream – we should be doing whatever we can to collect it, treat it and send it to soil cleanly. Compostable packaging can help do this.

At the same time, as a lot of food packaging is film and contaminated with food it is very difficult and expensive to recycle mechanically. Hardly any plastic film – maybe 4% – is recycled in the UK, so it is not a huge leap in our imagination to say “let’s make the packaging compatible with food waste treatment too”, and by this I mean anaerobic digestion (AD) and in-vessel composting (IVC). Indeed, the report Plastics in the Bioeconomy scoped the market for compostables, which is potentially around 5% of plastic packaging but 25% of films – small percentages, but these are key to getting food waste cleanly to soil as valuable nutrients. And where cups and lids are concerned, we can take those to open windrow composting, of which more than 150 plants exist in the UK.

The barriers to achieving this are:

(a) Poor collection schemes leading to cross-contamination, both of compostables from other materials (as in the case of both parliaments despite being collected separately) and of compostables into other materials (which is less likely if they are collected separately).

(b) AD plants will strip them out. Yes, they strip out everything at huge cost to AD operators – and there is a case here for cooperating and stripping out the compostables to send to composting. Provided they are not contaminated, composting costs far less than incineration, making savings for the AD plants.

The whole system is a mess. The UK waste management infrastructure is out of date and its collection systems are fragmented, hard to understand and impossible to communicate to citizens, plus it is hugely underfunded. It also exports vast volumes of waste all over the world: some 3m tonnes of refuse-derived fuel get burnt in Europe annually; some 600,000 tonnes of plastics get shipped for apparent recycling elsewhere, including to developing countries where we now know little is recycled but much is dumped; electrical waste is shipped from the UK to developing countries; while recent reports on low-grade paper waste being shipped to non-EU countries shows just how broken our system is.

Is it therefore any wonder that compostables are not collected properly? We have had decades to get used to the other materials, and are still making a mess of it. Compostables are here, now, so we’re likely to take time to get used to them too.

We need a long-term vision and plan, which is what DEFRA’s resources and waste strategy will create hopefully. We need to understand where we want to be in 2030 because this is how long it will take before the investments, plants and collection systems fully mature. From 2024 we will have obligatory food waste collections nationwide. But moving the waste industry takes time: they have investments to amortise, they need time to plan, authorise and develop new sites, and they need long-term guarantees on feedstock. Moving the waste giants is far from easy.

In such a vision, compostables play a role, but we need: accurate and harmonised collection systems to get them to food waste treatment; continuous citizen information on what goes where to avoid cross-contamination from all materials; to reduce the non-recyclable fraction of packaging carrying food; to improve the quality and quantity of food waste being recycled for energy and nutrients, with AD and composting working together as they do in other EU countries; and (we almost forgot) to reduce GHG emissions by substituting some fossil fuel plastics with bio-based materials.

Indeed, everything is connected: climate change, packaging, food waste, nutrients and soil quality.

David Newman is managing director at the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association.

Please find the original article by clicking here

riji®

Tue, 07 May 2019 13:34:11 GMT

riji® is made using waste by-products from sugar cane.

This totally natural tray is coated with a biodegradable material which stops them from leaking when filled with wet foods and stays rigid when heated up to 240°c in the oven making it easy & safe.

It is ideal for ready-meals, meat, salads & veg/fruit pots.

Colour: Natural

Size: 170 x 125 x 50 (LxWxD) or 500ml

Material: Natural plant fibre

Sold in cartons of 500 trays.

For more information, samples, orders, alternative quantities or deliveries outside the UK please call us on 02381 53 43 43 or email info@kccpackaging.com.

Wooden Tray

Tue, 07 May 2019 13:15:17 GMT

Our wooden tray is made from 2 ply Poplar Wood, ideal to lower your carbon footprint and a product that your customers will appreciate using.

Colour: Natural light wood

Size: 190-265 x 115 x 70mm (thickness 1.2mm)

Material: Wood

Sold in cartons of 525.

For orders, alternative quantities or deliveries outside the UK please call us on 02381 53 43 43.

For samples or more information email info@kccpackaging.com.

THE RIJI JOURNEY AS TOLD TO MEMBERS AT IOM3

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 15:16:05 GMT

The riji journey as told to members at IOM3

KCC Managing Director Kevin Clarke gave a well-received talk about our journey to launch #riji, compostable trays and cups with shelf life, which enable food producers to become #plasticfree.

The talk took place on 22 January 2019 at IOM3, and judging by the amount of questions that he was asked, there is huge interest in #riji.

If you’d like to know more about #riji, please contact us now.

Support for our compostable food packaging innovation?

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:11:20 GMT

The Ocean Plastics Accelerator

The Ocean Plastics Accelerator is a new competition to tackle plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, which has opened with an accompanying briefing event taking place today. KCC’s Managing Director Kevin Clarke is attending the event today, run by Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network, to ensure KCC Packaging stays fully aware of opportunities to take its compostable food packaging innovation forward, and to meet like-minded innovators in the world of reducing plastic.

The competition invites UK companies to develop solutions to tackle the environmental crisis of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. “Ocean plastic solutions investment accelerator: reducing plastic pollution” is open for UK businesses for a share of up to £2 million.

This investment accelerator competition provides £1 million grant funding from Innovate UK and £1 million private investment from Sky Ocean Ventures for early stage projects. The competition is open to single UK small and micro companies who are looking for grant funding and who want to establish an equity relationship with Sky Ocean Ventures.

Do you know Kevin Clarke and his family all wear 4Ocean bracelets to demonstrate their support for cleaning up the world’s oceans?

If you would like to know more about riji, our compostable food packaging innovation, please contact us now.