The company says its new offerings, Papira and Fibrease, are renewable and climate-friendly alternatives to traditional forms of protective packaging.

Stora Enso, a paper manufacturer based in Helsinki, is extending its packaging products with a new portfolio of bio-based foams made from Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood. The company says the products are fully recyclable and can be used for protective and thermal packaging. 

Its offering consists of Fibrease and Papira, foams that offer technical and sustainability properties.

Stora Enso says Papira is a fiber-based monomaterial designed to be biodegradable and compostable. Papira can be recycled with paper or cardboard, that way the material can be used to make new paper products and ensure optimal use of resources. Fibrease can be recycled in any paper or board streams. The company says it has tested the packaging at real recycling facilities.

The packaging can been collected through existing  recycling programs.

Fibrease is commercially available now, while the pilot plant producing Papira has started operations at the Fors site in Sweden, following the investment announced in August 2020. The pilot plant aims to evaluate and validate Papira as a packaging foam in customer tests. The foams can be used for protecting fragile goods and are optimal for thermal packaging of temperature sensitive products.

According to a news release from Stora Enso, fossil-fuel-based packaging is a major contributor to pollution, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s plastics. With Fibrease and Papira, Stora Enso says it is introducing renewable and climate-friendly alternatives to fossil-fuel-based protective packaging.

“Consumers of today are pushing to minimize the use of plastic and maximize recyclability,” says Markus Mannström, executive vice president of biomaterials at Stora Enso. “At the same time, the need for packaging protection is increasing due to growing demands in e-commerce and cold-chain logistics. With our bio-based foams, we help customers create eco-friendly and circular packaging solutions while also meeting material performance needs to protect and insulate the goods.”

The partnership’s first product will be Laneige Water Sleeping Mask, available next month.

Amorepacific, a beauty company based in Seoul, South Korea, and materials provider Eastman, Kingsport, Tennessee, have announced a collaboration designed to reduce plastic waste. The two plan to introduce sustainable packaging solutions using Eastman's molecular recycling technologies. 

According to a joint news release, Amorepacific’s Laneige will use packaging made from Eastman’s Cristal Renew copolyester with certified chemically recycled content as early as next month.  The recycled content certification is achieved by allocating the recycled plastic to Cristal Renew using a mass balance process certified by ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification), based in Germany.

"Cristal Renew and Eastman's innovative molecular recycling technologies will play a crucial role in helping us achieve the commitments laid out in our '2030 A More Beautiful Promise' without sacrificing the premier beauty experience customers expect from Amorepacific," says Jung Changwook, senior vice president of Amorepacific development and purchasing division.

Laneige's Water Sleeping Mask featuring Cristal Renew jars will be available at cosmetics retailer Sephora in the U.S. and Canada.

Eastman says its molecular recycling technologies break down hard-to-recycle postuse plastics into building blocks used to create new materials that are comparable with traditional materials in clarity, luster and mechanical properties. The process also will reduce the use of fossil resources and result in 20 percent to 50 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional manufacturing. 

"It's an honor to be selected as a partner in Amorepacific's sustainability journey," says Glenn Goldman, commercial director for Plastics at Eastman. "We look forward to working further with them to bring new innovations to market, beginning with the Laneige launch before the end of the year." 

The $10 million investment will help the company commercialize its aluminum sorting operations.

Sortera Alloys, the Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company that uses patented sorting technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to produce aluminum packages from shredded automobiles, has received $10 million in funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Kirkland, Washington. Sortera says it will use the funding to scale its operations and grow its team.

Sortera, which operates from a 10-acre facility in Fort Wayne, previously received funding from Chrysalix and the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The company is a spin-out from the ARPA-E METALS (Modern Electro/Thermochemical Advances in Light Metal Systems) program and is led by a team with experience in the fields of advanced materials, electronic instrumentation and equipment development.

Sortera says it uses advanced AI-powered image, data analytics and sensors to produce specification aluminum scrap packages for primary and secondary aluminum producers. Its first mass production plant is under development and will be operational in 2022. Sortera says it has been shipping trial truckloads of aluminum feedstock in the form of cast, sheet and extrusions for the past few months from its pilot plant.

The company has more than 25 issued and pending patents and claims to offer a low-cost, scalable and high-throughput solution. Sortera says its AI-powered sorters can upgrade feedstock streams and remove unwanted contaminants. The upgraded materials can then be used to make new products in markets ranging from automotive cast and flat-roll products, building and construction, aerospace and consumer packaging. 

“The global waste industry is over $2 trillion, with nearly 90 percent of that heading to the landfill or incinerators,” says Nalin Kumar, Ph.D., founder and president of Sortera Alloys. “The volume of global waste is expected to grow by nearly 70 percent in the next few decades.

“Companies are looking to create products for their customers with lower-carbon materials. At Sortera, we are enabling the domestic production of novel feedstock materials from existing automotive streams [and] at the same time boosting the strength of the circular economy and creating new jobs,” he adds.

Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures says, “Sortera is using AI and engineering expertise to uniquely deliver high throughput with high purity in its sorting processes while also keeping costs down. Scrap metal is an excellent place for market entry—aluminum is a $10 billion market alone, and the production of virgin material has huge emission factors. The auto industry, in particular, should be very excited about Sortera's ability to deliver high-purity recycled materials without the cost and negative impact of producing virgin metal feedstocks.”

The asphalt paving project was completed at the construction site of Nova Chemicals’ newest polyethylene facility.

Nova Chemicals Corp., a Calgary, Alberta-based manufacturer of chemicals and plastic resins, and GreenMantra Technologies, Brantford, Ontario, have completed a second asphalt paving project in Ontario, incorporating the equivalent 700,000 plastic bags in postconsumer recycled plastics materials into two pathways and a parking lot.

The project was completed at the construction site of Nova Chemicals’ newest polyethylene (PE) manufacturing facility near Sarnia, Ontario.

GreenMantra initiated a field paving trial in 2020 that included the equivalent of 118,000 plastic bags in two 1,700-foot pathways, and according to Nova Chemicals, based on the positive performance of the test strip last year, the companies proceeded with the expanded paving project.

“This is an excellent example of Canadian innovation and collaboration to shape a world that is better tomorrow than it is today,” says Sarah Marshall, vice president of sustainability at Nova Chemicals. “Together, we are finding new solutions to divert plastic waste from landfill and create a circular economy for plastic materials.”

Nova Chemicals announced several other collaborations earlier this month when it partnered with Milton, Wisconsin-based Charter Next Generation (CNG), an independent producer of high-performance specialty films used in flexible packaging. According to the companies, the goal of that partnership is to increase CNG’s use of postconsumer resin for flexible film applications. 

Nova Chemicals also partnered with Houston-based Circulus, which will supply Nova with recycled PE.

“We’re incredibly proud to introduce railcar quantities of PCR to our portfolio of product offerings,” Luis Sierra, president and CEO of Nova Chemicals, said earlier this month. "This is a significant milestone in how we’re delivering value to our customers and there’s much more to come as we look to achieve our bold ambition of creating a circular economy for plastic materials.”

GreenMantra upcycles postconsumer and postindustrial recycled plastics into specialty waxes and polymer additives that enhance asphalt, roofing and plastic products, and the paving project with Nova Chemicals incorporated a polymer additive from GreenMantra that, according to the company, boosts performance of the asphalt and delivers more durable roads.

“Nova Chemicals’ $2.5 billion investment in two Ontario growth projects brings cutting edge technology, high-paying jobs and long-term viability to the region,” says Rob Thompson, vice president of manufacturing at Nova Chemicals. “This paving project that incorporates recycled plastic in our new parking lot is another way we can demonstrate our commitment to sustainability and being a good neighbor here in Lambton County.”

Recycled-content aggregates now part of environmental services firm’s “ecoproducts” line.

Harsco Environmental, a division of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based Harsco Corp., is rebranding its former Applied Products line to “ecoproducts,” a trademarked name it says reflects Harsco’s “capabilities as an end-to-end solutions provider.”

The renamed line of products includes more than 60 products serving seven industries, including iron and steel, road building and abrasives, roofing, construction and cement.

States Harsco, “ecoproducts strives to provide a sustainable alternative to virgin material by being more cost-effective and offering higher performance than raw materials such as mined or processed metals.”

Comments Russ Mitchell, vice president and chief operating officer for Harsco Environmental. “Where most see waste, we see unimagined value. Since our inception, Harsco Environmental has been renowned for its vast service offerings and has remained at the front lines for our customers. As we evolve into an environmental solutions provider, we are committed to increasing our sustainable offerings.”

Adds Mitchell, “Our rebranding to ecoproducts better represents what this product line offers to all stakeholders, the industry and our customers.” Stakeholders include steel mill operators who generate the slag that Harsco processes and construction and road building contractors who are end users of recycled-content aggregates containing slag.

Harsco Environmental says it also has adjusted aspects of its internal structure and launched a new website focused on ecoproducts.  Adds the company, “As the most comprehensive provider of onsite material processing and environmental services to the global metals industry, Harsco Environmental has operations at more than 130 customer sites across more than 30 countries.”