Advanced Recycled Plastics

SABIC, Gualapack and Ella's Kitchen collaborate on advanced recycled plastic baby food lid Leading chemical industry company SABIC has announced a new collaboration with Ella's Kitchen, the UK's number one baby food brand, to create a new closure made from recycled plastic. More than 3.5 million Ella's Kitchen Organic Strawberry and Apple containers will feature this new lid and will be on shelves in UK stores from January 2022. The recycled content for the closure is created using certified circular polymers from SABIC's TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio and comes from recycled plastics derived from post-consumer waste that would normally be sent to incineration or landfill. SABIC's resins are then used by Gualapack, the market leader in spouted closures for the baby food segment and supplier to Ella's Kitchen, to manufacture the lid. Ella's Kitchen will be the first company in the baby food category to use certified circular polymers from SABIC's TRUCIRCLE portfolio. [caption id="attachment_133431" align="aligncenter"] The new closure uses certified circular polymers from SABIC derived from advanced recycling of post-consumer plastic that would otherwise be sent to incineration or landfill. SABIC's resins are then used by Gualapack to manufacture lids for Ella's Kitchen.[/caption]

Beneficial for Food Packaging Ecosystem

Abdullah Al-Otaibi, General Manager, SABIC ETP and Market Solutions, said: "As SABIC, we are committed to creating sustainable, innovative solutions for our customers that optimize the natural resources of our planet and create value from post-consumer plastics. Using advanced recycling technology, we produce high-quality, food-grade packaging materials that can be transformed repeatedly. This new collaboration with Ella's Kitchen is beneficial for the food packaging ecosystem and another important step toward a circular economy for used plastics." The new collaboration forms part of Ella's Kitchen's broader packaging commitments to reduce the environmental impact of its packaging and make all its packaging widely recyclable by 2024. Chris Jenkins, Manager, Runs The Good Stuff We Do (Sustainability + Corporate Communications) at Ella's Kitchen, said: "Protecting the planet for future generations is our most important priority at Ella's Kitchen. That's why we're proud to partner with SABIC to work on innovative ways to reduce the environmental footprint of our packaging by offering recycled content. We understand that this won't solve the recyclability issue of our packaging, but we hope it demonstrates our commitment to creating change and the opportunity that chemical recycling could play in creating food-contact recycled content for packaging. We hope the industry will continue to focus on and invest in advanced recycling to increase the availability of the material that is really needed to unlock lasting change." Stefano Manfredi, Global Sales and Marketing Director at Gualapack, said: "Since our goal is to offer the widest portfolio of sustainable solutions, we are pleased to be part of this innovative journey with our customer and supplier." SABIC's TRUCIRCLE portfolio comprises a range of products and services including design for recyclability, mechanically recycled products, certified circular products from feedstock recycling of used plastics, certified renewable products from bio-based feedstocks, and closed-loop initiatives, to help recycle plastic into high-quality applications and prevent valuable used plastics from becoming waste. SABIC's certified circular polymers are produced through advanced recycling of mixed and used plastics that would otherwise be sent to incineration or storage. In a process called pyrolysis, used plastic that is difficult to recycle is broken down into chemical building blocks to produce pyrolysis oil. This is then used as feedstock by SABIC to create certified circular polymers with the same properties as virgin material. SABIC's circular polymers are certified under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Plus (ISCC PLUS) scheme following the mass balance approach. This widely recognized international sustainability certification verifies that the mass balance accounting complies with predefined and transparent rules. Additionally, it provides traceability across the supply chain from raw material to final product. Source