Finalists announced for top sustainability prizes

Packaging Europe, which organises the Sustainability Awards, has revealed the 25 finalists competing for the packaging Sustainability Awards 2019.

This year’s edition of the prestigious sustainable packaging innovation competition attracted a record-smashing 193 submissions and now a panel of elite international, independent jury have completed round one of its deliberations.

“It’s exciting to see such geographical and technological breadth in the 2019 entries. We’ve had engagement from six continents and across the whole of the packaging value chain, but more importantly, the quality of submissions feeds optimism that the industry is taking huge strides to meet the environmental challenges,” said Tim Sykes, Head of Content at Packaging Europe.

“The competition features both high-profile developments and innovations I hadn't previously come across, and the competition is fiercer than ever before. Really strong entries achieving grades that could have won a trophy in the past have failed to make this year’s final.”

Below are the highest rated of this year’s entries, which will now compete for the coveted trophies at the Sustainability Awards ceremony at FachPack on 25th September:

‘Bio-based’ category

• Barrier solutions based on Cellulose NanoCrystals (by Melodea Ltd, Israel)
• tara-cool TC20 tempered transport box based on bio-degradable material and tracking (by Taracell AG, Switzerland)
• FlowPap® Evo, plastic-free, biodegradable & heat-sealable paper packaging (by Pyroll Group Oy, Finland)
• Globe Soap - packaging for soaps, shower gels and shampoos featuring a thin foil tube made of compostable cellulose, hung by a sisal band, and with a wooden ball made of spruce serving with its self-acting gravity as a closure (by popular packaging, Germany)

‘Driving the circular economy’ category

• LuxCR™ process, which depolymerises mechanically recovered PET back into the monomer unit bis(2-hydroxyethylterephthalate) or BHET (by DuPont Teijin Films, Luxembourg)
• Delamination and deinking of plastic surfaces (Cadel Deinking, Spain)
• Detecta - black plastic packaging with no carbon black pigment and first on the market to be identified by the sorting systems (Quinn Packaging, Ireland)
• Recycle Pro - disrupting the Nigerian recycling industry through their efficient digital sensitisation and value creation from waste (Recycle Pro Innovation, Nigeria)
• HolyGrail project investigating how tagging of packaging can have a drastic impact on more accurate sorting and high-quality recycling (HolyGrail full-value chain Pioneer Project from New Plastics Economy, Belgium)

 ‘Resource efficiency’ category

• Biodegradable and marine degradable fibre composite, (Plafco Fibertech, Finland)
• Mixpac Ecopacc collapsible cartridge for adhesive applications (Sulzer Mixpac AG, Switzerland)
• Manufacture of PET Drums using the CYPET Process (CYPET Technologies, Cyprus)
• Tide Eco-Box designed to reduce packaging and plastic, shipping/transportation emissions, and losses due to damage in the e-Commerce supply chain (Procter & Gamble, USA)

‘Machinery’ category

• EcoStitch all-electric hot melt gluing solution (Valco Melton, USA)
• Nowa Packaging - forming fibres in dry conditions into 3D packaging without an intermediate wet process such as wet moulding or traditional paper board production (The Loop Factory AB, Sweden)
• Combined technology to run fully recyclable packaging material without speed limitations (SN Maschinenbau GmbH, Germany)
• DigiColor / IoD new inking system with a design that uses fewer grams of ink in the print unit (BOBST Srl, Italy)

‘Best practice’ category

• Loop: the new circular shopping platform with reusable packaging (TerraCycle, USA)
• Comprehensive sustainability strategy (Ardagh Group, UK)
• CEFLEX - driving towards the circular economy for flexible packaging (CEFLEX, Netherlands)
• Social Plastic Ecosystem – partnership with the Plastic Bank social enterprise, aiming to stop ocean plastic and simultaneously provide opportunities for people in poverty (Henkel Beauty Care, Germany)

‘Recyclable packaging’ category

• Wave Bag - a paper envelope that guarantees full items' protection, total paper recyclability and logistics savings (OFFMAR Srl, Italy)
• Finish 0% Eco Pouch - fully recyclable all-PE packaging (Reckitt Benckiser, Netherlands)
• All-PP mono-material pouch solution for dry foods (Jindal Films / Unilever / Mondi collaboration, Luxembourg)
• X-CYCLE PE recyclable barrier and metal-free packaging (A.Hatzopoulos SA, Greece)

The winners in each category and overall 2019 Sustainability Awards winner will be announced at FachPack, Nuremberg, Germany on 25th September.