Packaging multi-national Tetra Pak and dairy major Lactalis unveiled an aseptic carton pack made of certified recycled polymers from used drink cartons – a first in terms of material-sourcing and processing for the beverage carton industry.
The material is ISCC PLUS-certified as originating from used cartons recycled in Spain and packages Lactalis Iberia’s Puleva range of calcium skimmed, semi-skimmed, whole and lactose-free milk.
What's ISCC?
The International Sustainability and Carbon Certification scheme is a voluntary, globally-recognized certification system that enables traceability through the supply chain, including of fossil-based materials such as mixed plastics derived from mechanical or chemical recycling. Unlike the ISO 14001 standard, ISCC sustainability certification schemes are more product-focused.
Tetra Pak’s VP of packaging materials, sales and distribution solutions Marco Marchetti told us all the plastic in the cap and in the protective layers of the packaging material structure use recycled polymers. The material is allocated on a mass balance attribution principle.
“This means that the certified recycled polymers are made up of a mix of recycled and non-recycled virgin fossil feedstock, ensuring the corresponding volume of recycled material is tracked throughout the supply chain,” Marchetti told us.
“Compared to today’s current offering of packages with recycled content, the difference is the source of the plastic feedstock, which is chemically-recycled to produce new polymers, further demonstrating that a circular approach to cartons is possible.”
Marco Marchetti, TetraPak
In essence, certified recycled polymers can be allocated, based on a mass balance attribution method, to compensate (by weight) different plastic components of the package, depending on the system, the VP told us. “To address different customer needs, we designed a flexible offer, allowing the allocation of certified recycled polymers to either 100% or 30% of the total package polymers’ weight. These percentages can also be used to develop on-pack communication towards consumers.”
Getting the message across to consumers is important - according to Tetra Pak research, the vast majority of shoppers (78%) are concerned about the impact of plastic waste on the environment, and more than a quarter (29%) report they are buying more products in recycled packaging.
And while the amount of recycled polymers in the new carton pack is traceable at supply chain level, for shoppers it’s impossible to know precisely how much recycled material has gone into a particular pack of milk; or how much carbon emissions have been spared in the process.
“Although consumers cannot track the recycled content in a specific carton, the mass balance approach ensures the corresponding volume of recycled material is tracked throughout the supply chain,” Marchetti said. “[W]e can’t bring evidence of CO2 reduction on the level of single packages, [but] we have seen that plastic-to-plastic pyrolysis-based chemical recycling shows lower impacts in climate change and fossil resource usage compared to current cradle-to-grave product systems, according to the Life Cycle Assessment of Chemical Recycling for Food Grade Film commissioned by The Consumer Goods Forum to Sphera in 2022.”
On a balance, the development is welcome for both industry and consumers alike, as it contributes to material circularity.
“This advancement keeps quality resources in circulation and reduces the industry’s dependence on virgin, fossil-based materials, aligning with both companies’ ambitions to further enhance the environmental profile of packaging,” Marchetti said.
Specifically, Tetra Pak plans to invest €100m ($98m in today’s exchange) annually for the next 5-10 years to achieve this, while Lactalis has made responsible packaging and the circular economy one of its global environmental priorities.
So where does the recycled polymer material come from?
The material is certified as originating from used cartons recycled in Spain. “As in many markets, the recycled cartons go to paper mills after collection and sorting; in this case, the paper mills involved are SAICA and ALIER,” Marchetti explained.
“At the paper mill, post-consumer carton packs are mixed with water to extract the paper fibers and make paper pulp. This pulp is used to enhance the quality of various paper products, such as e-commerce boxes and shopping bags.
“After extracting the paper fibers, the polymer and aluminium from the packages are dewatered, packed in bales and sent to the recycler, to be turned into new products such as panels, profiles, pallets, crates and tiles.
“The resulting oil is then sent to a polymer producer, which uses it in combination with virgin oil to produce new plastic. This plastic - featuring identical food safety and quality specifications as virgin, fossil-based plastic - is then shipped to Tetra Pak’s converting factory in Arganda, Spain.”
Challenges persist
The latest packaging advancement comes in the face of continuous challenges for packaging innovators; from investing in the development of aluminum-free barriers to advancing chemical recycling and improving sustainable material availability.
Carton recycling
Improving carton recycling – which requires separating the aluminum barrier from the pack before the composite materials are ready to recycle – has traditionally been a major focus for Tetra Pak. It invests around €40m/$41m per year to increase collection and recycling rates globally, but collections have only inched up by 7% from 2022 to 2023, an increase of around 1.3 million tons, according to the firm’s FY2023 sustainability report.
In 2023, this investment went into EU counties – Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden – in preparation for the bloc’s new packaging waste regulations (PPWR), adopted in December 2024. (Milk and other perishable beverages where aseptic technology is required for food safety reasons are exempted from meeting re-use targets under the legislation.)
The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE), a trade body representing carton packaging majors including Tetra Pak, has committed to increasing the collection and recycling of beverage cartons to reach a 90% collection rate and at least a 70% recycling rate by 2030. In the EU, cartons are recycled at a rate of 51% on average, ACE estimates.
From BeverageDaily: How can beverage carton recycling rates be improved?
Tetra Pak is among the industry players pushing the envelope in this respect, more recently by releasing a fiber-based barrier alternative and developing an aseptic carton pack that contains 90% renewable materials. So what are the remaining challenges to creating a carton that’s fully made from renewable or recycled materials, we asked?
“When considering the potential of both renewable and recycled materials, it is difficult to predict what our future portfolio range will look like, considering various value chain dimensions and scenarios that may evolve,” Marchetti told us.
“This is due several factors, including the scale of the change and systemic impacts across the value chain. In fact, replacing the aluminium foil layer with a paper-based (renewable) barrier has to be considered across several areas: food safety, quality performance, opening/closure and the sealing technology.”
“[There’s also the matter of] sufficient availability of renewable polymers and food-grade recycled polymers – plus the nascent stage of chemical recycling today – and the R&D acceleration required to identify an alternative barrier to replace the aluminum foil layer in aseptic carton packages, able to perform the same across the whole lifecycle of the product.” The evolving regulatory requirements are also an important consideration, he added.
“So far, the very limited availability of food-grade recycled plastics in the market, and with it a premium price, is setting the pace for the use of these materials,” Marchetti said.
“However, ensuring we can source food-grade recycled plastic is key for the transition to a circular economy, as it can contribute to increasing recycling rates of plastic waste, making better use of resources and reducing dependency on virgin fossil materials.
“Currently, chemical recycling is the only way to achieve recycled polyolefin films for food grade applications. Once operating at industrial scale, chemical recycling has the potential to recycle post-consumer polyolefin films in practice and at scale.”
Marco Marchetti, Tetra Pak
“By comparison, mechanical recycling systems can recycle post-consumer polyolefins, but their recycled material outputs cannot be used in food-grade packaging,” the VP continued.
“While the underlying technologies used for chemical recycling are not new, there is increasing interest in their application as potential solutions to create a plastic-to-plastic route and complement mechanical recycling, will help to build a circular economy for plastics. Scaling up chemical recycling will require investment and collaboration by stakeholders across the value chain, as well as enabling policies.”
“Increasing the uptake of recycled content will require industry-wide investment into collection, sorting, pre-treatment and recycling to ensure a stable supply and quality of recycled materials.
“The industry also needs legal certainty on the role of chemical recycling and mass balance to secure the required investment into necessary collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure, and to ensure fair competition between secondary raw material suppliers.”
