Colgate-Palmolive Co. has begun marketing its Murphy's Oil Soap in 25 percent post-consumer polypropylene bottles, using a new resin blend from Himont U.S.A. Inc. The bottles were introduced to comply with recycled-content mandates that took effect Jan. 1 in California and Oregon, according to Todd Van Gordon, environmental packaging manager for Colgate.
Production of the recycled-content bottles started in November. The firm blow molds the bottles at Murphy's Phoenix Co. in Solon, Ohio, a Colgate division, in 16- and 32-ounce sizes. The larger container will feature a molded-in handle.
``While it is our first use of post-consumer polypropylene, we do have significant post-consumer content in other materials in other products,'' Van Gordon said in a telephone interview from the company's New York headquarters.
The company's Palmolive dish washing liquid and other products are marketed in recycled-content PET bottles, and most of its laundry products are packaged in recycled high density polyethylene.
Colgate claims the new Murphy's bottles are virtually indistinguishable from the former all-virgin PP bottles, and have the same properties, allowing the company to maintain consumers' brand recognition, and still comply with the content laws.
Himont sells the recycled-content PP blend under the ReFax trade name, said Ellsworth Brown, ReFax product manager for the Wilmington, Del., resin maker and compounder.
Brown said Himont plans to produce about 2 million pounds annually of ReFax at its Polymer Resource Group Inc. subsidiary's plant in Baltimore. The plant has annual capacity of 16 million pounds, including HDPE and PP.
ReFax already is being used by Coroplast Inc. of Dallas, a division of Innopac Inc., in corrugated board for applications such as political signs and dust-free slip sheets for bottling.
``Our goal is to point out the many end uses for which ReFax resins are ideally suited, and through efforts like this, encourage the national and international community to collect and recycle polypropylene into a growing number of new products where it makes economic sense,'' Brown said.
