With plastic pollution of the oceans fast emerging as one of the key issues of our age, the Birmingham based developer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly packaging solutions, Aquapak Polymers Ltd., has stepped forward, putting its name to the Global Commitment of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) to eliminate plastic pollution at source.
Aquapak has developed a range of solutions that can replace traditional plastics in a number of consumer packaging and other applications where the materials cannot be recycled.
The EMF, founded in 2010 by the famous round the world sailor, Dame Ellen MacArthur, after she sailed into a sea of plastic on one of her expeditions, launched the Global Commitment on Monday 29 October at the Our Ocean Conference in Bali.
As one of the most prominent NGOs campaigning for a more responsible approach throughout the supply chain towards the use of plastics, the EMF, working with the UN Environment, aims to establish a New Plastics Economy in which all plastic packaging is designed to be both functional and fully recycled. Creating such a circular economy, the aim is, once and for all, to eliminate plastic pollution at its source.
Aquapak is joined by 250 major fellow signatories of the Global Commitment – organisations that include many of the world’s largest packaging producers, brands, retailers and recyclers, as well as governments and NGOs – who plan to set increasingly ambitious elimination targets and to publish data that holds key stakeholders to account.
Mark Lapping, CEO of Aquapak, said of its signing, “We are pleased to be one of only a small number of raw material suppliers to join the Global Commitment, as we see the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as one of the most effective voices aiming to create a circular economy for plastics.
We are also delighted to have now reached a state of commercial readiness, with the development of both our technology and our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Birmingham. We will now be able to help make important contributions over the coming years to solving some of biggest problems of non-recycled packaging that face us all.”
The company, founded in 2005 and based in Rubery, bases its innovative solutions on a special formulation of a single polymer, Hydropol ™, a high-performance material that combines effectively with other traditional and environmental single material polymers.
Hydropol ™ is naturally safe for marine species and degrades harmlessly into the soil, if it escapes into the environment. It can also be combined with other materials to deliver the same functionality as traditional plastics and other non-recyclable products.
However, unlike them, Hydropol ™ is water soluble at high temperatures, enabling it to be separated from those other materials in standard waste stream processes, which in turn allows both materials to be recovered and potentially 100% recycled.
