Bioplastics wins award for supplier Cardia, recycling for preform molder APPE

First to Melbourne, Australia, home of Cardio Bioplastics. The company has been presented the 2011 Asia Pacific Frost & Sullivan Green Excellence in Technology Innovation Award for Eco-Materials. Frost & Sullivan is a technology and growth consultancy.

Frost & Sullivan presents its Green Excellence Awards to companies it says have excelled in green product and technology innovation, and service achievements that promote sustainability. Cardia develops, manufactures and markets plastics derived from renewable resources for packaging and other applications. The company's materials are supplied from its plant in Nanjing, China.

European perform molder and bottle blowmolder APPE, meanwhile, the former Artenius PET Packaging (and before that Amcor's PET processing operation in Europe), has won the 'Beyond the Package' award in the Greener Package Awards for the plastic processor's initiatives in recycled PET production and the 100% remanufacture of the material into packaging applications.

Part of the Greener Package website (www.greenerpackage.com), which also includes a product database with detailed environmental data, discussion groups and a news blog, the awards claim to be the first independent global competition focused on packaging sustainability, judged by a panel of industry experts.

APPE is the packaging division of LSB, which also owns Artenius PET, a major PET supplier in Europe. The group produces virgin resin, processes preforms and bottles, recycles PET and incorporates the rPET back into bottles. The processor runs its own closed-loop bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant in Beaune, France.

Established in 1998, APPE's Beaune facility has capacity for food-grade material of 35,000 tonnes/yr, which has made it the largest food-grade rPET producer in Europe. APPE estimates the plant prevents 1.8 billion bottles annually from going to landfill.  All of the Beaune facility's output goes into new bottles, and the closed-loop system means the material can be recycled multiple times. This compares to the European average of recycled output going back to bottles, which is just 22%, according to trade association Petcore, with the remainder going to other applications such as strapping and fibers where it is recycled only once.

"We are delighted to receive the Greener Package Award accolade," commented Martin Hargreaves, APPE's general manager. "Over the years, we have consistently demonstrated our commitment to environmental responsibility in many different ways, including our pioneering work in the production of food-grade rPET and its direct remanufacture into packaging, and the development and subsequent expansion of our Beaune plant. All of this clearly showcases the major role recycled PET can play in an effective sustainability program.