Bioplastic Packaging Is Cheaper Than Cardboard

Although bioplastics are acceptable bulk aggressive in packaging and abiding applications, they're generally added big-ticket than petrochemical-based polymers. So it can be hasty to acquisition out that, in at atomic one instance, they can be cheaper than cardboard.

The key is in the reusability of artificial packaging, which pushes down the all-embracing cost. But it's aswell in a closed-loop/reverse acumen bureaucracy amid Ecospan, the architect of bioplastic shipment containers, and its customer, a absolute ample chump electronics manufacturer. This bureaucracy reclaims and recycles bioplastic absolute and puts it aback into the accomplishment loop.

Originally, the electronics architect beatific agenda shipment containers to its barter so they could forward aback baby electronics, such as smartphones, for adjustment or exchange. Typically, the agenda boxes can't be reused, Jeff White, Ecospan's president, told us. "Due to abrasion and breach and the bulk of relabeling if the box is packaged and unpackaged several times in a adjustment instance, it can't structurally bear assorted adjustment instances."

Under Ecospan's closed-loop reclaim and recycling model, its BioFlow artificial containers can be reused through six complete adjustment instances. Even admitting the bioplastic-based box ability bulk alert as abundant to acquirement as a agenda box, its bulk of buying is several times cheaper. At the end of its lifespan, the container's absolute is reclaimed, reground, and angry into a new container, befitting these abstracts aural the accumulation chain.

In the closed-loop system, on the foreground end of the aeon Ecospan provides customized architecture of bio-based plastics for both abiding appurtenances articles and artefact packaging. On the aback end, the aggregation makes bioplastic shipment containers and manages about-face acumen operations that absorb reclaim and regrinding of both containers and articles fabricated from its plastics.

"We accomplish the material, and we accredit third-party cast makers and others that action the material, run the molds, and accomplish the locations for the customer," said White. "Or we can advice adviser the chump to do all this themselves as the accepted contractor. We accept centers about the apple area acclimated articles are best up, cleaned, and sorted for processing, so they can be reclaimed and reused."

The chump electronics company's anniversary adjustment aggregate is 10 actor units. The aggregation was spending about $27.5 actor per year on agenda packaging, labeling, and alteration the cardboard, including absorber stocks and fallout from damage. After implementing the closed-loop/reverse acumen aeon and switching to a bioplastic shipment container, the aggregation ample it would absorb $6.6 million, extenuative $20.9 million.

"The bulk of our alembic and cleaning, labels, etc. was college per piece, but because we could get at atomic six abounding adjustment instances per Ecospan box, we could accommodate an astronomic anniversary ROI," said White. "The absolute accumulation is college because they're accepting added than six."

BioFlow is 100 percent petroleum-free and can be attenuated with added petroleum-free capacity or with petroleum-based polymers. In January, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) certified BioFlow as 94 percent biobased, beneath the agency's BioPreferred program. The actual 6 percent represents carbon that's not petroleum-based.