First Impression, Biofuel, Eco-Friendly CD/DVD packs
By Converting Magazine Staff -- Converting Magazine, 5/1/2008 2:00:00 AM
First Impression
If anybody understands the benefits of direct mail, it's the post office. This laptop computer (right), made of paperboard with chocolate keys, is a mail piece intended to stand out from the crowd. The chocolate wrappers bear information on the Switzerland Post Office's services.
Its mailing supplier, Huber PrintPack AG (www.huber.ch) of Frauenfeld, Switzerland, converted the box using 380-g/m2 Frövi White paperboard from Sweden's Korsnäs (www.frovi.com). The company also provides graphic design and contract-packaging services.
“Really heavy mailings require corrugated, but otherwise we use Korsnäs cartonboard 90 percent of the time,” says Huber account manager Josef Weber. “The board's high compression strength and stability ensure that the packaging holds its shape, and the creases and tear-strips work according to plan.”
New eco-friendly CD and DVD packaging options nix the plastic
With sustainability catching on just about everywhere you look, it can be difficult to sell oil-based plastics, especially for packaging. The latest examples: New York-based Shorewood Packaging's (www.shorewoodpackaging.com) two new additions to its “green” packaging portfolio: REPAK® and Flip-Pak (right). Both CD and DVD packaging options are made from third-party certified, renewable, virgin or recycled paperboard and printed with eco-friendly inks and coatings. Unlike other packaging made with plastic trays or hubs, the containers are completely renewable, recyclable and sustainable, Shorewood says.
“The home entertainment industry is seeking ways to positively contribute to environmental initiatives. We offer options for customers who want to reduce costs, energy, materials, and waste,” says Greg Chup, Shorewood product development manager.
The four-panel REPAK can be designed to accommodate the same number of trays as the converter's current Disc Pack. Tray options include plain white, flood-coated one-color or custom printed, using either gravure or offset printing. Tray gluing is an automatic, one-step operation for disc insertion that saves energy, the converter says.
The Flip-Pak's slide-out design has the disc sit directly on the paperboard, protecting it from scratches. Its pop-up mechanism presents the disc when the package is opened.
“Cooked” waste packaging becomes bioethanol fuel
Bill Orts, a California Dept. of Agriculture research leader, says a high proportion of cellulose from discarded paper packaging makes municipal refuse a lucrative source of bioethanol for gasoline and diesel substitution. In a test in Salinas, CA, his team of enzyme researchers “steam-cooked” rubbish in a large autoclave to reduce volumes and extract cellulose for fermentation into transport fuels.
An inevitable byproduct of the trial was “a smell you'd never quite forget,” but payoffs included an immediate 30-percent reduction in rubbish volume, easy recovery of cans and bottles sterilized in the 20-min “cooking” process, and masses of clean fiber with a 70 percent cellulose content.
“You can hydrologize that into fermentable sugar and can make ethanol out of it,” says Orts. Municipal solid waste, being almost 40 percent paper-based packaging, was far more easily digested by enzymes than normal timber wastes.
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