Sustainability

This page contains no pledges. Packaging sustainability has enough of those and they are not what a procurement team can put in a tender response.

What follows is what we can actually supply, what it costs, and what we cannot do yet.

Recycled content

Post-consumer recycled polyethylene is available across the sack range and, in narrower grades, in stretch film.

Two things worth knowing before specifying a percentage:

PCR is not free of trade-offs. Above roughly 50%, sack films lose some puncture resistance and gain a grey cast that no colourant fully hides. For general waste this is irrelevant. For a clear recycling sack where the contents must be visible, it is not, and we will tell you so rather than take the order.

Recyclate supply is genuinely tight and moves with the market. An 80% PCR specification can add a week at short notice. On repeat programmes we hold material against a forecast to avoid that.

Using less material

The most reliable saving is using less, and it is the one most suppliers do not raise because it reduces what they sell.

Downgauging sacks. Many buyers specify 20–30% more gauge than their waste stream needs, usually because the specification was set years ago against a different bin or a different contractor. A sample trial at one step down costs nothing and often holds.

Pre-stretched film. Film pre-stretched to 300% uses 30–50% less material per pallet than conventional hand film at equivalent load stability. It is the single largest material reduction available in this catalogue, and the stretch film cost calculator shows the effect on your own numbers before you ask us for a price.

Right-sizing the sack to the bin. A sack two sizes over the container is polymer bought to be thrown away, and it is the most common overspend we see.

Machine film over hand film. Above roughly 30 pallets a shift, a wrapper pays for itself in film alone.

What we supply for your reporting

Every order in PPWR scope ships with:

• signed Declaration of Conformity per packaging type
• technical documentation pack, retained for 10 years
• material composition and recycled content statement
• packaging weights by material — polyethylene, paper, wood — per unit and per pallet, in the format EPR schemes ask for

The weights are the part buyers underestimate. EPR reporting is by material and by weight, and reconstructing that from invoices after the fact is a week of somebody’s time per quarter. Supplied with the goods, it is a spreadsheet you already have. See EPR packaging by country.

Compostable products

We supply caddy liners certified to EN 13432, which is industrial compostability — not home composting, and not the same as “biodegradable”, a word with no regulatory meaning that should be treated as a warning sign on any specification sheet.

EN 13432 liners only deliver their benefit where the waste actually reaches industrial composting. In a municipality that incinerates food waste they are a more expensive sack with no environmental gain. We will ask which applies to you before quoting.

What we do not do

• We do not claim carbon neutrality. We have not measured our footprint to a standard that would make the claim meaningful, and buying offsets to say it anyway is not a sustainability programme.
• We do not have our own environmental certification. Our manufacturers hold ISO 14001, FSC and PEFC; those are theirs and are presented as theirs.
• We do not supply oxo-degradable plastics. They fragment rather than degrade, and they are restricted in the EU.
• We cannot yet supply PCR content certified to a mass-balance chain. Recycled content is stated on the basis of the manufacturer’s material declaration.

The honest summary

The largest environmental effect available to most buyers on this catalogue is not switching to a greener grade. It is using 30% less film per pallet and one gauge less sack — both of which reduce what we sell you. We raise them anyway, because a buyer who finds out later that their supplier stayed quiet does not stay a buyer.