Berry Superfos: PCR containers maintain strong user benefits

Berry Superfos has begun to offer its most popular industrial packaging ranges in versions containing 50 per cent PCR material as standard to support non-food packaging customers.

The use of 50 per cent PCR applies to the various Berry Superfos products, including the SuperCube, SuperLift, SuperLift Extra, SuperFlex, PS Range, EuroFlex, Hobbock and Paintainer ranges, which all offer a mono-material solution as they are made solely of PP.

Uwe Zinnert, Business Development Manager at Berry Superfos, said: “By choosing a packaging solution containing PCR, you contribute to the development of the circular economy. You save virgin materials and, after use, the packaging is suitable to enter PP recycling streams once again; a fact which many end-users today will find appealing.”

They can also be decorated using Berry Superfos’s advanced In-Mould Labelling decoration technique, where artwork designs provide the opportunity for companies to promote to end-users that the packaging includes recycled content.

Zinnert added: “For more than a decade, we have developed and produced tailor-made containers with PCR content for various applications such as paint, surface coatings, building materials, de-icing salt, fertilisers and other non-food products. We are delighted that an increasing number of our customers show an interest in converting to packaging with PCR content.”

Editor’s note: Local kerbside recycling collection schemes in England have refused used paint tins – whether plastic or metal – for as long as such services have existed. Now that non-food packaging manufacturers are becoming more and more involved in PCR content and mono-material containers for added recyclability, it seems strange that local governments have not caught up by investing in the appropriate equipment and infrastructure, especially since the consumer has long been willing to recycle such containers after use.

A ‘Recycling facts’ drop-down section on the Cheshire West and Chester (CWaC) website is both unhelpful and confusing: ‘it takes a hundred buckets of water to create just one loaf of bread and six buckets of water to grow one potato,’ it states, for no obvious reason. But that’s not all, further recycling facts include ‘600 million household batteries are sent to landfill. That’s the same weight as 3,666 Tyrannosaurus Rex’s’, and ‘most UK households throw away at least 40kg of plastic each year which is enough to make 10 recycling bins.’

Why T-Rexes, though? Why not convert the weight into something we’re familiar with like giraffes or double decker buses? And this last fact only prompts the question, ‘so why don’t you?’

‘80% of the things we throw away could be recycled,’ the CWaC website adds, but does this figure include mono-material plastic paint tins (and other items) that are refused at kerbside collection points? Furthermore, the official website also announces that the local Trade Waste and Recycling Disposal Centre will permanently close on 1 April 2022 ‘due to the fact that the current usage isn’t high enough’.

Interplas Insights approached Cheshire West and Chester Council for a comment on whether a cleaned out, mono-material plastic paint can be recycled. A representative stated that 'paint cans are listed as non-recyclable on our website. They shouldn't go in the recycling bins because the materials should be loose and paint will contaminate the load when it's compacted'.