Eureka! Organic Bread switches to bread bags made of 36% sugarcane-based PE when introducing its products to the East Coast market for marketing and sustainability benefits.
In introducing its line of three organic bread varieties to East Coast consumers, Eureka! Organic Bread rolled out new packaging as well that complements its brand messaging of “being full of everything consumers want and less of what they don’t,” says Mike Jensen, Assistant Brand Manager at Bimbo Bakeries USA (BBU), owner of the Eureka! brand. The new polyethylene bread bag is made from 36% bio-based material, Braskem’s Green PE, made from sugarcane.
“Consumers react positively toward companies that use sustainable packaging,” says Jensen. “So as consumers were discovering Eureka! for the first time, we thought it would be the perfect time for them to also discover this new packaging technology. Braskem’s Green PE technology is in line with the wants and needs of the organic consumer.”
Related: Collaborate and Solve Supply Chain Challenges at RPA Reusable Packaging Forum April 28 - 29 »
Eureka! Organic Bread is baked with organic whole grains and high-quality ingredients, and contains no artificial colors, preservatives, or high-fructose corn syrup. Packaging for the product displays the USDA Organic and Certified Vegan shields. First introduced in 2012 in 27-oz packaging, the bread made its way from the West Coast to the Pacific Northwest, and then to the East Coast in September 2014 in the new packaging, sold in major grocery retailers.
Beyond the marketing advantages of the bio-based bread bag, Eureka!’s new packaging provides significant greenhouse gas reduction benefits: According to a lifecycle analysis conducted by Braskem, for each ton of Green PE produced, approximately 2.15 tons of CO2 equivalent are captured from the atmosphere. In addition, because Green PE provides the same properties as fossil fuel-based PE, it can be seamlessly integrated into the bag-making conversion process and is 100% recyclable.
“There were very few drawbacks to switching to Green PE, because bio-based PE is identical to petrochemical PE in both mechanical and performance properties,” confirms Jensen. “The only difference is that bio-based PE comes from ‘new carbon’ plant based versus ‘old carbon’ petrochemical based.”
BBU settled on 36% bio-based content as a place to start. “It’s a balance to get the material to have the right quality,” says Jensen. “At the 36% level, there is enough material in the bag to make an impact on its sustainability.”
While Jensen admits that there are costs involved with adopting the new technology, he believes that as market opportunities and volumes grow, these costs will begin to decrease. Eureka! is the first BBU brand to employ Green PE; the company is closely monitoring the film’s performance and consumer feedback before expanding it to other brands.
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SUPPLIER:»Braskem
By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor, Packaging World
Making bio-based PET monomer from furfural.
By Tetsuo Satoh | April 1, 2015
The research group of Yuya Tachibana at Gunma University (Gunma, Japan; greenpolymer.chem-bio.st.gunma-u.ac.jp) has developed a procedure for the production of terephthalic acid (TPA), the monomer of the widely used thermoplastic polymer polyethylene terephthalate (PET), from the inedible biomass-derived starting material furfural. Alternative, commercially available bio-based PET is made from bio-based ethylene glycol (derived from bioethanol) and petroleum-based TPA, which is made from p-xylene, so the amount of biomass carbon content in the PET is only 20 wt.%. This new route to TPA offers the possibility for 100% bio-based carbon in PET.
The production process consists of six steps: (1) oxidation of furfural to fumaric and maleic acids; (2) dehydration of the acids to maleic anhydride; (3) Diels-Alder (DA) reaction of anhydrous maleic acid and furan to the exo-DA adduct; (4) dehydration of the exo-DA adduct to phthalic anhydride; (5) hydrolysis of phthalic anhydride to dipotassium phthalate; and (6) transfer reaction and acidification of dipotassium phthalate to TPA. In laboratory trials, TPA was produced with 19% yield and 95–98% purity.
Tachibana says the group aims to improve the production process by reducing the number of steps to two, increasing the yield to 35–40% or even higher (50%). He says the use of bio-based TPA for plastics has the potential to fix approximately 970,000 ton/yr of CO2 in Japan.
read more on
http://www.chemengonline.com/making-bio-based-pet-monomer-furfural/
reactie XEA.nl
Er komt beweging in de Biobased products.
Plastic cards van PLA en nu broodzakken afbreekbaar etc. etc. |
