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The foodservice packaging institute fpi recently announced the founding of the "plastics recovery group" prg, a collaboration of businesses and organizations dedicated to creating solutions to expand the recovery and processing of used plastic foodservice packaging. Today, a limited recovery infrastructure and end use markets result in valuable resources ending up in landfills.

With the price of polymer resin skyrocketing, food suppliers are driving packaging costs down wherever they can. This drive can result in tremendous savings but can also have disastrous results if not done correctly. A 50b food producer decided to implement a lumetrics solution that produces a major reduction in the amount of resin used in processed meat packaging. The lumetrics optigauge is creating a savings of over 500,000 per line, per year&mdasha payback of under six months. This savings was over twice the amount the customer expected.

Pacific natural foods has received the association of oregon recyclers&39 aor 2012 leadership in sustainable practices award. Not given annually, the award is reserved to celebrate organizations that find solutions to materials management issues and far exceed sustainability performance of similar establishments. Fueled by the discovery that 95 percent of its landfill waste was comprised of food contaminated packaging, pacific designed and constructed a custom solution that cleans, crushes and prepares discarded used packaging for recycling.

Founded in germany in 1979, lebensbaum is a pioneer in the production of organic tea, coffee and herbs. The company&39s success has been built on a combination of pure tasting ingredients, ecological foresight and social responsibility.

The assn of postconsumer plastic recyclers apr, the trade association of companies that recycle postconsumer plastics in north america, has issued a new guidance document to deal with the growing issue of fullbody sleeve labels on pet bottles. The sleeve label substrate for pet bottles critical guidance document addresses several key label design issues that affect the removal of the labels in recycling process and quantifies the effects of label residue on pet bottle recycling.

Hormel foods has announced its second set of environmental goals, while also announcing that the company surpassed the water reduction, packaging and solid waste minimization goals of its first set of fiveyear goals, which ended in 2011. Hormel foods improved performance on a number of key metrics, including surpassing the packaging minimization goal reducing packaging by a total of 21.8 million pounds and beating the water reduction goal reducing water consumption by 15 percent.

as the best athletes in the world compete for the gold, a plastic bag battle continues to rage. a londonbased grassroots campaign had hopes that a plastic bag ban at the london 2012 olympics would help earn a gold medal in sustainability. the group, called greener upon thames, launched its campaign in 2010 to ban plastic bags at the london olympics. the campaign was packed by highprofile names, which included richard branson and british fashion designer vivienne westwood.

Black cat vineyard, a small, artisan winemaker in the napa valley, has performed a successful realworld test of a new multipack shipper for its wine bottles. Ach foam technologies launched a new wineloc recycledcontent summer wine shipper in may 2012. The 6pack wine shipper has been received into the market with enthusiasm. During may and june, ach delivered the first 5,500 packs into service. Ach&39s new shipper easily passed three tests, performed at ach foam&39s facility, a thirdparty agency and now a "real world test" via black cat vineyard.

Npulp strawpulp technology uses a chemical process that converts a naturally abundant resource straw into pulp for paper making, a process that reportedly requires less energy and reduces the amount of greenhouse gases produced, according to its manufacturer.