What's New in Sustainable Packaging
There’s a lot happening in Sustainable Packaging!
We talked to Greg Berguig, VP of Sales and Marketing at PAC Machinery and he said much of this is being driven by consumer demand for more environmentally-friendly packaging. – both in packaging materials and on the equipment side.
PAC Machinery is adapting and updating product offerings to prepare for the demand for sustainable packaging and has been working on increasing the recycled content percentages in their materials for automatic baggers. PAC has developed mailer bags that are actually made with over 90% recycled materials. The bags are made with over 50% (PIR) Post Industrial Resin, over 20% Consumer Recycled and over 20% Ocean Bound recycled plastics. These products are available through PAC’s Bags and Materials Division and are ideal for brands that want to have a high degree of bags made of recycled content.
Another innovation coming in 2023, is PAC’s paper Rollbags that eliminates the reliance on the plastic poly mailer once and for all. PAC’s brand, Fiberflex® paper mailers for Rollbag automatic bagging machines is water repellant and can be recycled in the homeowner’s curbside recyclable container.
PAC’s Rollbag Brand of Automatic Baggers deliver exceptional value, speed, and flexibility for bagging operations. Take a look at the machine models available.
PAC is also working on curbside recyclable paper mailers for our line of flow wrapping machines. This will be ideal for the food industry where flow wrapping machines are ideal for their individually wrapped products.
PAC Machinery offers materials and machinery which makes it ideal to get both from the same company to ensure that your machine and bags are working together in the most optimal and sustainable way possible.
Recylene® Line of Recycled Rollbags Manufactured with recycled content
Check out our Automatic Baggers
Video Transcript
Q- So you’re going to tell us a little bit about sustainable packaging Solutions today Greg?
Yes! We could talk about that Shannon absolutely! It’ll be my pleasure.
Q- What can you tell us about recent developments that have been made in the industry as far as sustainable packaging in terms of materials?
It’s an interesting question. I think a lot has been happening lately. There’s been this consumer demand for more sustainable packaging as people look at whether it’s our oceans whether it’s the boxes that they get delivered to their house. The focus on packaging and what gets done with that packaging I think is as high as ever by consumers and as a result of that we’ve seen a lot of developments. I mean I feel like we’re just starting to see some really cool things happening out there on the material side as well as on the packaging automation side of things. Think about packaging especially flexible packaging is traditionally you think of plastics whether that’s like a polyethylene a polypropylene I mean there’s a lot of different plastics out there you know what we’ve been working on for some time now is increasing the recycled content of the bags that we manufacture so going from 20- 50 80- 90 plus percent recycle content which is pretty cool actually right here. I actually have a mailer bag see that that is over 90 recycled content so which is extremely high it’s got over 50% industrially recycled resin or as we call that PIR post-industrial recycled it’s got over 20% consumer recycled. So imagine when you take a poly bags and you drop them off at the store or what not to get recycled. It’s got over 20% PCR post-consumer recycled plastics and then my favorite is over 20 ocean-bound resin so ocean bound plastics is essentially things that are collected within 30 miles of the shoreline so you can imagine in like third world countries and things like that where they’re paying people to pick up plastic that’s being collected that’s being sent back it’s being recycled pre-processed and added to that so this is pretty exciting for brands that want to have a high degree of recycle content and that’s available with PAC Machinery through our bags and Materials Division. It’s designed to run on our Rollbag® brand of Automatic Baggers so I could essentially use this today to scan, load, seal and ship items out to my customers or my customers customers.
Q- Is that big do you think in the Fulfillment industry?
It’s starting to be there you know brands large retailers out there their plastic bags you know have over 50% recycled content so you’re starting to see that but I don’t think plastic is the end of the discussion actually.
So there might be another solution coming?
I think there are there are certainly solutions and then obviously I mean it’s no surprise but paper is a great option if you know you have an environmental sustainable type of message and you want to have some type of packaging automation around that. It’s been it’s amazing to see all these you know heat sealable, curbside recycle papers out there.
Q- Waterproof?
Yeah they have water resistance so that the bag could be out in the rain or it could have different barriers for food. I think that’s where we’re going to really see the growth because you imagine something that’s paper I can actually and if it’s curbside recyclable obviously it has to be otherwise like what’s the point right? I could put that in my paper recycling bin and everyone knows who knows that knows that and this is actually a cool sample I have here. This is made of our fiberflex® material and it runs on our Rollbag® Automatic Baggers it is a curbside recyclable bag in this case it was some samples. You got some pill bottles in here which is a tremendous market. I mean the prescription and non-prescription mailers think about all those things that come in poly bags that are single use. Basically, I take them the machine we’ll take the bag, open it up, print apply shipping label, seal it and because this is familiar to a customer (it’s a brown bag right it’s paper) it says recycled like there’s no question that I just put it in my curbside recycling bin. So that is coming out. It’s really just coming out of the r&d stage right now, I mean we’ve had tremendous demand I think the issue is going to be supplying the market more than anything else.
Here are some samples that are flow wrapped so this has been flow wrapped on our PAC FW 400F FLOW WRAPPER again curbside recyclable paper. This actually has some pretty cool looks you know it’s got some recycled content in it which also you think about flow wrappers you can think about food. I’ve been thinking about this a lot like food seems to be and you know mailing is good but think about the price trying to minimize my shipping cost when I’m mailing but with food, I can all of a sudden print a whole bunch of branding on it. So imagine frozen items that you get that are typically shrink wrapped, I mean what is the purpose of that shrink wrap it’s just to contain it, nothing else right? So why not wrap that in paper and why not put a window in it and a lot of branding on it and then maybe I’m getting rid of the exterior carton.
There’s a lot of exciting things around sustainability. We are constantly innovating on the equipment side of things. We’ve got next year I’ve got some Machinery that I am super, super excited about that obviously I can’t talk about yet. There’s been a lot of change over the last couple years in packaging materials absolutely faster and faster. We’re seeing it everywhere. I think one thing that we bring to the table at PAC Machinery is that we offer the materials and the Machinery so we can make sure things work hand in hand. That’s so important to have you know one person who’s taking full responsibility on the solutions. They can’t be like “oh yeah the seals are no good because the equipment and the materials are you know then then the equipment guy goes no it’s the coating on the material that’s you know so no we’re responsible.
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