Like many companies, Essentra Components, a manufacturers and distributor of component parts for a wide range of industries and products, has set numerous sustainability goals and targets to be achieved by 2025. Specifically, it has committed to sourcing 20% of packaging and polymer raw materials sustainably by 2025 and has also become a signatory of the European Commission’s CPA, thus becoming part of a Europe-wide movement to boost the use of recycled plastics in the market to 10 million tons by 2025.
Today, the company is starting to make good on those commitments.
Among others, Essentra Components has said it aims to reduce its impact on the environment by revisiting its use of plastics. The company is doing so through waste reduction projects, striving for zero waste to landfill, trials of recycled and biodegradable materials and trials of “closed loop” business models in partnership with suppliers and customers.
Previously, the company had announced to its customers that it has successfully increased the recycled material content of its core LDPE range from up to 40% to up to 50% and that these products were already available to customers.
Now, a new milestone has been achieved, the company says.
A two-phase project that is exploring the use of recycled material for the production of a number of products within its LDPE range has demonstrated that these are able to be manufactured almost entirely from recycled materials. The selected product range consists of tapered caps and plugs, corner protectors, tube end plugs and tube end caps. Made from 98% recycled plastic with the remaining 2% being made up of colourants, the products successfully came through all phase one trials; phase two of the project consisting of quality assurance testing is currently ongoing.
The project focussed on core products in the LDPE range because LDPE is one of the most widely used resins on the market, used to make everything from plastic bottles to plastic bags, said Richard Sederman, Strategy and M&A Director at Essentra Components.
“However, these products are often readily disposable, creating a considerable volume of waste. Using recycled LDPE is a vital step towards circularity, helping the whole industry reduce its carbon footprint, and develop the materials of the future.”