Envision Plastics pushes forward with food-contact recycled plastic packaging

Consolidated Container Corp. expects demand for its OceanBound brand of recycled high density polyethylene to increase now that the company has received clearance for food contact from the federal government.

CCC, through its Envision Plastics recycling subsidiary, uses plastic collected within about 30 miles, or 50 kilometers, of waterways to serve as its OceanBound resin. Without collection, the plastic has the potential to be swept into waterways that lead to oceans.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a letter of no objection for OceanBound, clearing the way for its use with food-contact packaging.

Up until now, the company has been supplying the resin for items such as electronics packaging, sunglasses and other nonfood items, said Mark Shafer, senior vice president and general manager at Envision Plastics.

Nurture Hospitality Group, which makes hotel bathroom amenity containers, also indicated late last year a move to OceanBound resin and use of the nOcean — short for "no ocean" — symbol to identify those bottles and tubs.

"We fully expect this to dramatically increase the demand because our customers have been asking us to get the NOL [non-objection letter] in place," Schafer said.

The letter gives brand owners an extra level of comfort in using the resin. And while the resin already has been available for use in other applications, such as personal care items, the company expects the new status will give companies the extra piece of mind needed for wider use.

The federal government, in its government way, does not approve any recycled plastic for food contact. The agency only says it will not object and issues a letter. But that move opens the door for its use without objection.

Plastics in the environment is a red-hot issue that's gained the attention of the industry, environmentalists and the general public.

Ocean plastics are a particularly scorching situation as opponents to single-use plastics point to the problem as a reason to ban those products.

Many in the plastics industry, over recent years, have evolved their response to acknowledge that plastics must be managed better once they are used. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, for example, is a multicompany, multinational effort funded by corporate dollars to create programs and systems to attack the issue.

"As one of the larger processors of recycled HDPE in North America, we have assisted in lots of efforts as different organizations have worked really hard, and we've been fully supportive of that, as they worked to step up to collect this material and get it processed back into something useful," Shafer said.

CCC and Envision, which has recycling locations in both Reidsville, N.C., and Chino, Calif., have established supply chain programs to collect littered plastics, load them into shipping containers and send them off to one of the company's two processing sites.

"We did this in response to a lot of customers saying, 'We want more supply, we want access.' Ocean plastics are a problem in our society. So what I'd like to say, a bit provocatively, is we've eliminated that barrier. We've worked hard to make that available. And now we'd like to partner with organizations to bring it to market to serve the needs of their end users," said Brian Hankin, senior vice president of innovation, strategy and business development at CCC.

Plastic is collected by residents in Haiti as well as one other location that CCC declined to identify. The source of recycled plastic for OceanBound is no better or worse when it comes to contamination than domestically collected HDPE. Depending on market conditions, the material can have less contamination, Schafer said.

The key to the program is that CCC and Envision have worked on supply chain logistics to help local people manage the plastic they handle. That work includes "helping the organizations in these areas to learn how to identify and how to collect the plastic, how to incentivize the local folks who collect the plastics, how to safely load the container, and just as importantly, how to safely load a container so that it can be safely unloaded as well," Shafer said.