According to a Pira report, RFID and printed electronics will have a big impact on the printing and publishing industries 
A little longer than 80 days perhaps, but UV-cure inkjet is circumnavigating the globe at its own accelerating pace. 
| Starpol Sustainable Materials |
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| Written by Terry Robins, Chief Operating Officer, Stanelco plc | |
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Over the last few years consumers have been growing up and asking questions of an environmental nature and there have been few answers from the oil based plastic producers, but there have been a lot of answers from the small group of companies at the forefront of a packaging revolution. The Sustainable Packaging Gang has arrived. Material that has been grown in fields, materials you can compost, materials that will biodegrade, and not just degrade (I’ll come on to those nasty materials later) are here now. This is the future, right here and now in your local supermarket. Stanelco plc is a company that is in the forefront of developing a range of materials based on starch. Stanelco and its companies, Biotec GmbH, Adept Polymers Ltd and Aquasol Ltd are developing materials to fulfil the needs of the modern consumer by using sustainable products rather than fossil fuels. Stanelco has developed a range of materials that can be thermoformed from sheet, injection moulded or even blown into film. Packaging material that is so versatile it has many properties that similar materials just don’t have. But let’s try and get our heads around some of these flash words. Sustainable crops means crops grown this year, and again the next, and so on. The most used crop product for packaging starts with starch. This can come from corn, wheat, potatoes, tapioca and rice etc. Biodegradable means bacteria will eat it and it is converted into water vapour and carbon dioxide. Compostable means if you send it to your local compost tip with the garden cuttings it will be turned into a soil improver and stop you digging up the peat bogs in Ireland. Stanelco products are all of the above. What they are not is degradable. Degradable materials are not to be confused with biodegradable. Degradable, or often known as oxo-degradable packaging, is generally fossil fuel materials that has metals such as cobalt sterates added to make them breakdown over a period of years, usually 3-4, which as the particles become smaller they blow around the hedgerows and are washed into the water table - after the birds have had their peck that is! Stanelco materials are not to be associated with any oxo-degradable system. Stanelco’s material Starpol 2000 is a “plastic” based on Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) which is derived from corn starch. However unlike PLA, Starpol 2000 is not brittle. Unlike PLA, Starpol 2000 has an improved gas barrier and could be used for a range of packed foods. Also unlike standard PLA, Starpol 2000 will freeze and still not become brittle. You can turn a Starpol 2000 tray inside out, screw it into a ball and it will not crack or break. And in extruding the polymer into sheet, injection moulding it into coat hangers or blowing it into film to make bags it can easily take 50% regrind and all without the requirements of pre-drying the polymer – it’s better than Harry Potter! Obviously we cannot divulge the magic ingredients we put into PLA to give it these attributes, but food contact is certified and so is bio-degradability under EN13432. Starpol 2000 unfortunately is not a clear material but can be made into any colour provided that we have the appropriate environmentally responsible colour additives available. So why should packer fillers or retailers use bio/compostable sustainable packaging? Certainly it is the future as opposed to the continued use of fossil fuel based packaging but it is more than that. In 2012 a recently passed EU directive comes into force in the UK. It basically states that food waste cannot be sent to landfill, which on its own looks to be good and no big deal, until you consider where all of the out of code product and damaged product is going to end up if it is not sold? Retailers will have to remove the food from the packaging, which is going to cost a fortune. Unless, that is, the food is already packed in compostable packaging, in which case life becomes easy again. On the other hand we could follow the French and start a ban on all fossil fuel plastics. Now that would really put the cat amongst the pigeons, but please think on. There are already levies on packaging throughout the EU. Ireland put a tax on plastic carrier bags and the price of PRN’s fluctuate year on year. When the EU alters the levy system to favour sustainable crop plastics over fossil fuel packaging, and I say when, not if, the tide will change forever. We are already seeing oil prices rise far beyond imagined prices making fossil fuel plastics prices follow suit. Viable landfill sites are due to run out in the UK within the next decade so something has to give. I believe that as consumers gain more information and it costs retailers more to landfill, the new breed of sustainable crop products such as our Starpol 2000 material will be a requirement rather than a nice-to-have. There may be some hybrid packs that use both sustainable packaging and fossil fuel in the interim and I have no problem with that, but ultimately sustainable crop, bio/compostable packaging will take over from fossil fuel materials sooner rather than later. But at Stanelco we do not stand still. Starpol 3000 is a new development, which will be available during 2006. This product has all of the attributes of Starpol 2000 but will be clear. Now being an ex retailer myself I’m not giving an offer of buy one get one free, but I will say that existing Starpol 2000 customers are likely to have first bite of the Starpol 3000 cherry. Starch is going to be an ingredient of a lot of future packaging and companies like Stanelco that have mastered that technology will be in the forefront. Next time you go into your local chippy, look down at the hot salty goodies and think, could they could have become a carrier bag?
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