Pushing the Plastics Packaging Industry Toward Green, Eco-Friendly Development

With the continuous development of the social economy and ongoing changes in the global environment, consumers are increasingly vocal in their demand for environmentally friendly and resource-saving product packaging. Traditional plastic packaging materials can no longer meet market demand. At the same time, the implementation of domestic policies related to environmental protection, green development and degradable plastics continues to drive China's plastic packaging industry toward green and environmentally friendly development.

At the 2022 Packaging Industry Summit Forum recently held by the China Packaging Federation, a number of packaging companies held in-depth discussions and exchanges on sustainable development, digital construction and other topics.

Plastic recycling system not yet fully established

"Pollution does not come from plastic itself, but from the unreasonable recycling of plastic. Plastic packaging actually has a lower environmental impact than other materials." Ma Rongrong, Sustainability Director of Amcor Greater China, a leading company in the flexible packaging industry, said this while sharing the company's sustainable development practices.

"Today, most plastic products are laminated films, which are difficult to recycle or have low recycling value; the plastic recycling system has not yet been fully established, and the recycling rate is low; the industry has not formed industrial chain collaboration, and the scale of product development and application is relatively small." Wang Daode, Chairman and General Manager of Zhejiang Chengde Technology Co., Ltd., spoke frankly about the bottlenecks facing the industry's development.

Speaking about global plastic pollution and the countermeasures of the flexible packaging industry, Gong Jian, Sales Director of Jiangsu Caihua Packaging Group Co., Ltd., also said that the recycling of flexible laminate packaging faces many problems, such as the difficulty of separating laminated packaging and the significant impact of foreign materials. In terms of key mono-material technologies, efforts should also be made to improve the quality and reduce the volume of basic film materials, and to empower film surface technologies, high-quality recycling processes for plastic flexible packaging, and the development of auxiliary material technologies.

Innovative technologies drive plastic packaging recycling

Facing problems such as the difficulty of plastic recycling, packaging companies are also actively exploring technological innovation to continuously promote the recycling of packaging.

Ma Rongrong said that white pollution should be reduced through effective use and recycling, and that the opportunities brought by sustainable development should be seized. The company will further join hands with partners to continuously promote the recycling of packaging on a larger scale. Since 2020, with the support of the China Packaging Federation, Amcor (China) Investment Co., Ltd. has joined forces with upstream and downstream players in the industry to launch China's first sustainable development and environmental protection initiative and series of activities for the packaging industry, aiming to call on industry peers to start from the source in environmental protection and to consider the recycling step at the design stage.

Wang Daode, taking the "same-material easy-to-recycle solution" as an example, introduced the research and development of functional polyethylene. This is an exploration from multiple plastics and reduced plastics to the same plastic, so as to meet the barrier requirements of downstream packaging materials as far as possible.

Gong Jian said that, looking at the current market and industry situation, the company is also thinking about and exploring innovative paths, and has proposed the "functional film project and high-barrier mono-material solution". This solution focuses on developing and producing film products that can be recycled in a closed loop, reducing overall costs, improving film performance, reducing the use of plastics and adhesives, and shortening the production process. Gong Jian introduced more new materials, including an innovative mono-material structure for high-barrier flexible packaging, namely the ultra-high-barrier high-heat-seal PP metallized film and the transparent ultra-high-barrier heat-seal PP film in the PP series and related materials. This material combines the barrier layer and the heat-seal layer into one, and can be applied to the inner or middle layer of packaging with ultra-high barrier requirements, and is especially suitable for replacing aluminum foil.

Wen Bo, President of Liaoning Dongsheng Group, proposed that degradable plastics have great potential, and that at this stage they are mainly driven by policy, with governments at all levels having stepped up efforts to advance policies on plastic pollution control. In particular, with the public gradually accepting plastic restriction orders, leading companies such as foreign-funded enterprises and chain brands have taken the lead in setting an example. Dongsheng Group will focus on building an industrial internet cloud platform through self-construction or mergers and acquisitions to link customers and factories, enhance its integrated service capabilities, and explore a way out for packaging companies through environmental protection and digitalization.

Low-carbon and green development becomes a "must-choice" for companies

Against the backdrop of the "dual carbon" goals, low-carbon and green development is both a way for companies to fulfill their social responsibilities and a development strategy to meet the demands of the times.

Wang Chuanlong, Director of the Packaging Research Institute of Sichuan Yibin Plus Packaging Materials Co., Ltd., introduced that smart development is an innovative topic in the industry's development, and the company has explored this field for many years and achieved remarkable results. The company is making multi-dimensional efforts to build a smart packaging ecological value system.

Zhang Qigang, Technical Director of Henan Yinjinda Holding Group Co., Ltd., proposed taking green products, green production processes, circular resource utilization and green post-use treatment as production concepts. Taking the "application of rPETG new environmentally friendly low-carbon label materials" as an example, the company upholds the concept of green design at the source, and the carbon footprint report shows that the goal of energy saving and emission reduction has been achieved. It hopes that the production process can be further greened to achieve low-carbon win-win results. In the future, it will focus on developing lightweight and easily recyclable labels, crystallizable labels, environmentally friendly water-based inks and recycled polyester labels, and is committed to solving an industry pain point, namely achieving the separation of bottles and labels. The company will continue to respond actively to the national call and, based on a full product life cycle assessment, build a green development system covering clear system boundaries.

Chen Liping, Chairman of Anhui Fengyuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd., analyzed the prospects of biological materials in green packaging. He believes that the bioeconomy is about to usher in an explosive period, and the company is committed to using straw as a biomass raw material to achieve efficient utilization. Under the relevant national requirements, it processes and manufactures bioenergy and biological material products through biotechnology, replacing ordinary plastics and chemical fibers with polylactic acid, and developing the biomass industry with bio-based polyamino acids and bio-based polycarbonates. On this basis, it realizes the utilization and conversion of renewable resources, transforming the "black gold economy" of oil and coal into the "green gold economy" of biomass processing, promoting agricultural development in an industrial manner, achieving sustainable development, and supporting China's high-standard agricultural construction and black soil protection.

Digital reform stimulates new momentum for the industry

As is well known, the packaging industry is large but not strong, and paper packaging companies are squeezed from both sides by the monopoly of upstream paper mills and the purchasing price pressure of downstream enterprises. How to reduce costs and increase efficiency has also become a pressing matter for many companies.

Zhou Mingxing, Assistant to the President of Zhejiang Dongjing Technology Co., Ltd., shared from the perspective of digital reform how the company found a new path to create a blue ocean in a red ocean market. He emphasized that paper packaging is "a standby for enterprises and a must-have for the industry", that the total market volume is huge and the potential value of digital transformation is high. By deepening the application of digital technology in many links such as production, operations and marketing, and achieving networked, digital and intelligent transformation at both the levels of the paper packaging industry chain and paper packaging enterprises, low-cost innovation can be achieved, empowering the paper packaging industry and promoting its upgrade and transformation. The company grew against the trend during the pandemic, and also achieved remarkable results in order-taking models, the degree of informatization, production management, logistics management and other aspects. In the next step, the company will use internet approaches and digital means to give play to the empowering and leading role of digital technology in the development of the packaging industry, improve the paper packaging industry ecosystem, and help small and medium-sized enterprises reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase value.

Facing the new challenges of paper packaging plants in the post-pandemic era, Zhou Tianhai, Director of the Smart Factory Division of Hubei Jingshan Light Industry Machinery Co., Ltd., discussed from the perspective of intelligent, economical, digital and connected operations how paper packaging plants can reconstruct value, and introduced the future trends and intelligent transformation and upgrading paths of paper packaging plants. He proposed overall solutions to the industry's pain points and current situation, including a three-dimensional whole-plant intelligent planning solution, an intelligent software visualized operation and control center, core intelligent equipment for the whole plant, and whole-plant intelligent logistics and non-standard automation equipment.

Jiang Changbo, President of Hunan University of Technology, said that to raise the level of modernization of China's packaging industry system, efforts should focus on a coordinated development pattern and vigorously optimize the regional layout of the industry; accelerate industrial restructuring and enhance enterprises' leading power in the industrial ecosystem and their control over key nodes of the industrial chain; strengthen the resilience of the industrial chain and promote strategic coordination between upstream and downstream players; promote the development of industrial clusters and form leading packaging manufacturing clusters; enhance independent innovation capacity, promote deep digital empowerment, and improve cooperation and development mechanisms. He emphasized that building a modern packaging industry system is the common pursuit of all "packaging people" and an inevitable requirement for building China into a "packaging power".

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-379385.html