(Photo Credit: Henkel)Henkel announced a new partnership with the organization Waste Free Oceans to gather plastic waste from waterways and turn it into Lovable laundry brand bottles. The German chemical and consumer goods company aims to have enough for at least 1 million bottles.
Plastic collection along the Danube River starts this spring. Volunteers will target plastic on river banks and beaches at known accumulation points while fishermen will capture floating plastic using a special device originally developed to help clean up oil spills, according to the partners.
From there, the plastic gets sorted, cleaned, and separated into different polymer types, Waste Free Oceans says. “Our partner recycler then creates small pellets by melting trash together,” the organization explains. “The pellets are combined with other polymers so that a stable and qualitative product can be built, either with the brand’s own converter or a converter we have built ties with.”
The recycled plastic will get incorporated into Lovable laundry detergent bottles. Currently these bottles are already made from 100% recycled materials and are fully recyclable, making them good candidates for the inclusion of recycled plastic from Waste Free Oceans. When the bottles initially hit the shelves in Germany before becoming available in the rest of Europe, there should not be a notable cost difference, a Waste Free Oceans spokesperson recently told FoodIngredientsFirst.
In 2017, plastic made up 52% of Henkel’s packaging footprint, according to the company’s latest sustainability report. The entire footprint was an estimated 871,000 metric tons, based on Henkel’s expenditures for packaging material.
In addition to the new partnership, Henkel participates in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s three-year New Plastics Economy Initiative. “We rely on packaging materials for which there are public recycling systems or that are compatible with the relevant regional collection and recycling systems,” the company says. “We focus on mono-materials, which can be recycled particularly efficiently.”
Henkel was also the first global consumer goods company to enter into a partnership with the social enterprise Plastic Bank, a social enterprise that aims to reduce plastic waste in the oceans while providing opportunities for people in poverty. Plastic waste gets sorted, processed, and integrated into recycling value chains as Social Plastic verified by the Plastic Bank, the company explained.
A number of other corporations have also been focused on incorporating ocean plastic into their packaging. Last summer Dell began shipping its XPS 13 notebook in materials made partially from this type of plastic. Procter & Gamble worked with TerraCycle and Suez to develop what they called the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25% recycled beach plastic. In October, P&G said they were expanding their pilot program with TerraCycle and Suez.
The 3rd Annual Environmental Leader & Energy Manager Conference takes place May 15 – 17, 2018 in Denver. Learn more here.
