Tuesday 5 February 2019

Wood you believe it! Sustainable cartons hit the shelves

A new packaging innovation involves lining paperboard cartons for milk, yoghurt and cooking products with wood-based bioplastics.

Finnish company Arla is planning to ship 40 million of the innovative packets out to supermarkets after listening to its customers' wishes to be able to shop more sustainably.

It says a thin plastic film is needed inside the carton for reasons of product safety and shelf life but adds the new product reduces the need for fossil-based plastics by 180,000 kilogrammes each year and reduces its carbon footprint by about a fifth.

Like traditional cartons, the new packaging can be recycled with cardboard.

Sari Mannonen, Vice President at UPM Biofuels, said: "We are very pleased to be working with a pioneer such as Arla, with whom we can further reduce the carbon footprint of paperboard packaging for liquids using our renewable raw material and this applies to the whole chain, up to the consumer.

"Also, by using wood-based raw materials we are not competing for raw materials with the food production industry, because tall oil is a residue of pulp production."