Packaging Cluster has designed a technical session for a company that founded the entity

The group Carinsa, partner and founding company of the packaging cluster, very sensitive to the sustainability of the planet, designed a monthly activity plan for their workers at the beginning of the year with the motto “CARINSA LO CUIDA”, where different activities related with taking care of the planet and the SDG objectives have been planned.

During 2020, more than twelve activities, one per month, related to the environment and sustainability have been planned. Due to the COVID-19, some of the exits planned in the March and April agenda have had to be modified and progress activities planned for later, one of which is Sustainable Packaging Trends.

For this reason, packaging Cluster helps them to prepare a technical session about Sustainable Packaging. Bernat Faura, professor at different universities as Elisava and UPC as well as Product Engineer in Plumartis, has held a keynote session talking about Packaging and Sustainability.

During the presentation, different graphics showed how the global consumption of Packaging is increasing due to different human actions, such as the increase in population or changes habits. With the increase in the use of plastic and the poor management of waste, it has led to the creation of different plastic islands in the oceans and seas. This image seen by all has made the plastic in the spotlight and has been classified as a harmful and bad material for the environment. Also, the Asian Countries closed their frontiers for the plastic waste that comes from the EU. This prompted the departure of a new regulation for plastic in the EU. This regulation wants to apply different restrictions to packaging in order to improve sustainability, where different restrictions will be applied until 2030.

New Packaging legislation is committed to a design that facilitates recycling, a boost in demand for recycled plastics, a reduction in plastic waste and the search for new materials. It was highlighted the importance of understanding the concepts of bio-based, biodegradable, and behavioral plastics all with different characteristics. It is the substantive to understand the differences in these concepts so that in the marketing sector it is not used incorrectly in the realization of sustainability advertising.

According to Faura, the trend towards where plastics should go is towards the use of polymers that are easy to recycle, reducing consumption and recycling, and also avoiding packaging with multiple layers, those in which recycling is not economically viable, such as tetrabrik, and avoid the use of black plastic and additives that complicate its subsequent recycling. On the other hand, with biopolymers, has a big problem in the production because their raw materials come from natural resources such as corn, a short-term alternative would be polymers of fossil origin such as PCL or PBAT.

What is the best material for packaging products? Bernat’s answer was; IT DEPENDS. It depends on the product it contains, it depends on the duration of the Packaging, it depends on the needs, etc. You must evaluate each product and each container separately to see which is the best Packaging and which is more sustainable for each situation.

Bernat pointed out that, in order to improve the packaging, one must look at the entire life cycle of the product. Look at the production process, minimize energy resources, optimize processes, design to promote recycling, a trend towards single material, reduce the volume of CO2 generated by the production of the container, among others.

Finally, the session ended with question time and a debate with the workers talking about key topics such as: bioplastics; edible packaging; Sustainable Packaging certifications; what the best Packaging is, among many other questions.

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Carinsa is one of the leading companies in this country in promoting research projects, where they are developed internally and with the collaboration of technology centers and companies. The different innovative projects are related to the field of fragrances and aromas. One of the most outstanding projects that have been discussed in the session is a product to avoid microplastics in the washing machine.