This Plastic Free July, Detpak is encouraging people to look for the hidden plastics in their takeaway packaging and find recyclable alternatives.
Marketing and Innovation General Manager Tom Lunn says many single-use takeaway food packaging items contain a plastic coating or lining, which may not be obvious to the consumer.
“There is much confusion in the market place about what is a good environmental packaging choice,” he says.
“Compostable cups and bowls are made with a ‘bio-plastic’ (PLA) lining, and even though it comes from plant starch, it is still a plastic. If that packaging does not make its way into an industrial composter, and at last count only about one per cent of packaging did, it is just as destructive as any other plastic packaging in the environment or landfill.”
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Tom says bioplastic can’t be recycled, so it’s more limiting than new technologies that are emerging to replace polyethylene.
“We champion recycling as the ultimate environmental solution for single-use packaging, innovating to enable our products to live again and contribute to a circular economy,” he says.
“Only through recycling do we reduce the number of trees being cut down to make paper products, and only through recycling are we keeping materials at their highest value, which is fundamental in the global move to a circular economy.”
Plastic Free July is a campaign led by the not-for-profit Plastic Free Foundation, aimed at encouraging people and organisations to reducing single-use plastic waste under the theme of ‘Your Challenge, Your Way’. The foundation is asking people to complete a challenge that suits their lifestyle.
For more information, visit www.detpak.com/sustainability
