Carbon-Free-Black is beautiful
At SENSOPLAST , black closure systems are also among the most popular colour variants in packaging for the pharmaceutical, cosmoceutical, food, CBD and cosmetics industries.
Plus points are the elegant appearance, the affordable price and the pharmaceutical and food certification. However, many of our customers do not realise that ‘black’ has been the black sheep of products in terms of plastic recycling.
NIR sortability
The majority of black plastic packaging is coloured with carbon-based pigments and therefore cannot be reliably identified as recyclable material in the fully automated recycling plants during plastic sorting. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), it is not possible to assign black plastic packaging to a recycling material group and then transfer it to a corresponding recycling channel.
The carbon acts like an impenetrable wall here, which does not allow the rapid analysis of the infrared technology. The polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) or thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) that is not recognised as valuable in this way is therefore not returned to the recycling cycle. The wasted recycling potential is therefore enormous. At SENSOPLAST, however, we can now use our newly developed CARBON-FREE closure systems to return up to 500 tonnes of valuable raw materials to the value chain every year, provided that they reach the recycling factories via the glass recycling system or the collection of recyclable materials from households.
This not only opens up opportunities for us to significantly reduce our carbon footprint; we also offer bottlers, patients and consumers an environmentally conscious and sustainable packaging alternative that has not previously existed in our industry.
‘The advantages are obvious: with the new CARBON-FREE-BLACK, we have succeeded in launching a disadvantage-free black variant in primary plastic packaging that adapts to the requirements of the circular economy, thus optimising the automated recycling process and minimising negative environmental impacts.’
Thorsten Schäfer, Head of Plastics Production, SENSOPLAST Packmitteltechnik GmbH
We will be presenting our latest CARBON-FREE-BLACK samples to the public for the first time at the upcoming CPhI 2022 trade fair in Frankfurt.
If you are already interested in our innovative black closure systems made of CARBON-FREE-BLACK, please do not hesitate to contact us and request your alternative samples:
