SWITZERLAND –Food packaging giant Tetra Pak has said plastic straws serve a "vital" function in cartons and should not be banned. Plastic straws can be recycled together with used cartons if they are pushed back into the box, the company said. Tetra Pak is developing a paper straw but it said it would still "be…
EUROPE - Europe’s bottled water industry has committed to major plastic goals to collect 90% of all PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles by 2025 as an average across the European Union, the efforts aimed at reducing plastic waste into landfill and oceans. The goal was revised from the previous 60% target and will ensure discarded plastic…
SPAIN - United Caps Luxembourg S.A., designer and producer of plastic caps and closures has acquired the Spanish manufacturer of closures, Embalatap for an undisclosed sum. United Caps said the acquisition expands its product portfolio especially the edible oil category since it relates to closures used in the Southern European market. The acquisition will not…
WORLD - Scientists in the United Kingdom and the United States have said they have engineered a plastic-eating enzyme that could in future help in the fight against pollution, according to Reuters. The enzyme is able to digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET - a form of plastic patented in the 1940s and now used in…
EUROPE - Plastic food packaging has failed to reduce food waste, but rather seems to be compounding the food waste problem in Europe, where packaging and waste has doubled between 2004 and 2014. In a new study published by NGOs Friends of the Earth Europe and Zero Waste Europe, food waste doubled to an estimated…
SWITZERLAND – Nestlé, a Swiss transnational food and drink company has announced its ambition to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or re-usable by 2025. Nestlé believes that there is an urgent need to minimize the impact of packaging on the environment, with a vision that none of its packaging, including plastics, ends up in…
SOUTH AFRICA - Nampak Ltd, the South African plastics bottle manufacturing company has welcomed proposal to sell its glass division in a way to create a more profitable business and address a skills gap, report Reuters. In addition to inconsistent electricity supply and insufficient technical skills at its glass division, the group highlighted that it…
UK - The UK government has announced that all bottles and cans whether plastic, glass or metal, will be covered by a deposit return scheme (DRS) to reduce on the amount of plastics and other waste going into the land or the sea. As a result, consumers will have to pay an extra cost for…
WORLD - Without intervention soon, the amount of plastic littering the world's oceans is expected to triple within a decade, a new UK government report warns. The "Foresight Future of the Sea" report from the UK Government Office for Science said our oceans have seen "unprecedented change as a result of direct human activity and…
UK - WHO has launched a health review into the dangers associated with plastic sin drinking water; assess the latest research into the spread and impact of so-called microplastics - particles that are small enough to be ingested. According to BBC, this review comes after journalism organisation Orb Media found plastic particles in many major brands of…
