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Materials & Packaging

The latest developments in materials, feedstocks and processes that are transforming the way many conventional products are made and packaged — and eliminating their negative impacts

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Companies Boosting Profits by Leasing Chemicals

The traditional business model of chemical suppliers selling their products in the largest possible quantities, while profitable, encourages the overuse of chemicals and places a strain on human health and the environment. But another model has emerg... View More

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Ecover Partners with Sonoco on Plant-Based Plastic Bottles for New North American Cleaning Products

Ecover, the world's largest maker of non-toxic, eco-friendly cleaning products, has teamed up with packaging producer Sonoco for a series of plant-based plastic bottles for its new North American home care line. ... View More

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Google, Facebook Flex Market Muscle in Favor of Healthier Building Materials

Google, Facebook, Genentech and several other companies and organizations comprising a working group of The Building Health Initiative are actively using their collective market influence to create demand for new and innovative products that improve ... View More

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Pantry Pest Could Provide Potential Solution to Plastic Problem

While companies around the world continue to innovate to find solutions to our ‘plastic problem’ — from creating biodegradable plant-based plastics to compete with their conventional counterparts to developing depolymerization processes to degr... View More

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Dow, Nestlé UK, Unilever Researching New Options for Recycling Flexible Packaging

Nestlé UK and Unilever are among organizations coming together on a new project aiming to improve the recyclability of flexible packaging products, in the hope of pushing the resource industry closer towards a circular economic approach. ... View More

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New Tool Measures Corporate Progress Towards Safer Chemicals

A group of corporate and NGO leaders today released a new tool for assessing leadership in corporate chemicals management.The Chemical Footprint Project (CFP) provides the first-ever common metric of its kind for publicly benchmarking corporate chemi... View More

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BASF, Schuster Developing Greaseproof, Recyclable Cardboard for Fast Food Packaging

BASF and recycled cardboard company Schuster have announced they are working on a solution for a combined migration and grease barrier on recycled cardboard.The biopolymer ecovio® PS 1606 is applied to recycled cardboard in an extrusion coating proc... View More

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VTT Developing Eco-Friendly Alternative for Polystyrene

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has announced it is developing an affordable and environmentally friendly alternative for polystyrene from PLA bioplastic, which is derived from organic sources.Although expanded polystyrene (EPS) is currently... View More

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UK Researchers Cleaning Mine Water with Algae

The GW4 Alliance—a consortium of four leading research universities in the South West of England and Wales—has announced a new project to clean up water from a Cornish tin mine using algae to harvest the precious heavy metals and produce biofuel ... View More

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Plum Organics Joins GreenBlue's How2Recycle Label Program

GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition announced this week that Plum Organics is the latest company to join its How2Recycle Label program. Plum joins 30 other participating companies — including most recently, Kellogg and McDonald’s — co... View More

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UK Scientists Say New Form of Carbon Graphite Could Revolutionize Renewable Energy, EVs

A recently discovered form of carbon graphite has a completely unexpected property that scientists say could revolutionize the development of renewable energy and electric cars.According to results published in the journal Nature, researchers at the ... View More

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Novelis 'Creating Value' by Increasing Closed-Loop Recycling, Reducing Carbon Emissions

Novelis’ recently released Fiscal Year 2014 sustainability report shows the aluminum rolling and recycling giant making significant investments and strides to advance the circular economy and increase the sustainability of its business, the aluminu... View More

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Carbios Makes New Advances in Reduction of Plastic Waste Through Enzymatic Depolymerization

Carbios, a French green chemistry company specializing in technologies dedicated to the recovery of plastic waste and the production of bio-polymers, recently announced that it has successfully managed to depolymerize 90 percent of polylactic acid (P... View More

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SC Johnson Highlights Lower GHGs and Waste, Higher Ingredient Transparency in 2014 Sustainability Report

In its just-released 2014 sustainability report, SC Johnson details progress on its environmental goals — including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent and manufacturing waste by 71 percent since 2000 — as well as si... View More

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AkzoNobel and Partners Considering Sugar Beets as Renewable Chemical Feedstock

AkzoNobel has joined forces with SuikerUnie, Rabobank, Deloitte, Investment and Development Agency for the Northern Netherlands (NOM), Groningen Seaports, and the Province of Groningen to investigate the possibility of producing chemicals from beet-d... View More

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Survey: Consumers Hate Product Waste More Than Going to the Dentist

This week, LiquiGlide Inc. — creator of a coating for the insides of food containers that helps coax out every last drop — released survey results that clearly illustrate consumers' intense dislike of product waste. ... View More

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Confused by All the Tools to Evaluate Chemicals?

While listening to the radio in New York City a while back I heard an ad for a ‘chemical free’ mattress.What is a ‘chemical free’ mattress? There is no such thing. In fact, like all of our consumer products, all humans, animals, and minerals ... View More

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Researchers Develop Process to Make Nanostructured Carbon from Sawdust Waste

Chemists at the University of Birmingham have found a new way to make nanostructured carbon using the waste product sawdust, according to research published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Green Chemistry.By cooking sawdust with a thin coat... View More

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AkzoNobel Develops Nature-Inspired Additive to Improve Road Safety

AkzoNobel has launched an additive for road salt to help protect against frost damage and improve driving safety.Inspired by the ability of certain animals to withstand cold and prevent ice forming in their bodies, Ecosel® AsphaltProtection is a ful... View More

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M&S Replacing Confounding Packaging Ties with Eco- and Consumer-Friendly Paper Version

Isn’t it great when a simpler solution makes the most sense? This week, Marks and Spencer (M&S) rolled out a much less aggravating alternative to the dreaded plastic and metal ties traditionally used to secure products inside packaging, particu... View More

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