Because brands have made commitments to make their packaging more sustainable, and they know how to do it, but they're waiting for legislation to require them to take the biggest steps that will make plastic packaging part of a truly circular economy. So right now, we're in a weird transition period for plastic packaging. They also want to minimize packaging cost. But the cost is higher, so brands are moving slowly.īrands want to keep using plastic because plastic packaging has a lot of advantages, including cost, convenience and safety. We're talking about changes that add cost, not subtract it.Īlong the same lines, closure makers have the ability to use more sustainable materials in their products, including post-consumer resins. And that's one of the rubs of sustainability discussions these days. So making real progress will require brand owners to widely adopt the new designs. There's one remaining problem, though: Consumers and recyclers may not be able to tell which closures are recyclable and which are not, since they look alike. Sign up to get our packaging or sustainability newsletters to get all the latest news straight to your inbox. So do designs that get rid of springs and metal balls in pumps and sprayers. Monomaterial plastic systems show a lot of promise. Tethered caps will reduce litter, and keeping them on bottles should increase the volume of caps that get recycled.Īnother big trend to watch is creating designs that make caps and closures easier to recycle. Tethered caps are already hitting the market in Europe, and everyone thinks they'll be spreading to other global markets soon. In fact, one of the trends that we can see coming in the near future will make caps heavier. But when we talk about cap sustainability now, the emphasis isn't on lightweighting anymore. It also helps to minimize the carbon footprint of packaging. That saved money for brand owners, so it was a no-brainer to invest in lightweighting. Lightweighting highlighted advances in design, tooling, materials and processing that have helped cap makers shave grams of material from their products. But until recently, when closure makers talked about sustainability, the conversation was primarily about lightweighting. Sustainability has been on the agenda for a while. We've been doing the Caps conference for a long time - since 2003 in Europe and 2010 in North America. Sustainability was a major part of all the presentations. Plastics are poised to benefit, but it's not going to be easy.Īt our Plastics Caps & Closures 2022 conference last month, I got to hear firsthand from officials from Altium Packaging, Berry Global, Bericap, Closure Systems International, Silgan Dispensing and Retal PA. We are going to see new designs and materials in the near future. The packaging market is on the cusp of a new era.
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