Can The OTC Market Join Sustainable Efforts?
For quite a while this was indeed a challenging question. We’d spent 30 years serving the Pharma/OTC/Nutra market, and knew we had to come up with a viable solution, but what was that solution? With so many FDA requirements to meet when switching to any component let alone a sustainable component, especially in OTC/Pharma the question was daunting. Then, Compression Blow Forming entered the market and blew the doors off of the challenge behind the question…Here’s what happened…
how innovation coupled with a green initiative full of hope and DETERMINATION render results!
With green initiative commitments, many companies were turning to various types of sustainable materials. Unfortunately, the OTC/Pharma sectors, could not make changes as quickly as other markets since the bar held for consumer safety and product efficacy is super high, AS IT SHOULD BE! So when Sacmi rolled out it’s CBF platform for manufacturing HDPE plastic bottles, promising the reduction of plastic of, up to 24%, I won’t lie, I broke out in happy dance. Like anything innovative and given the regulatory requirements needing to be met, it was time for the rolling up of sleeves accompanied by furrowed brows! How?, How?, How?
The innovative platform was ready to go, that was a huge win. Now, a partner/partners in the plastics material world was required and to ensure success it was necessary to meet a few Key Requirements…
The Key Requirement:
- Plastics Reduction (Eliminate As Much As Possible)
- Barrier Performance (Equal or Better)
- Maintain Plastic Recyclability (At 100%)
The best part is that, we can fast forward to today, when we not only have the solutions with the platform necessary to remove up to 24% of the plastic used in traditional blow molding , we also have proven materials that can maintain and in some cases may exceed the traditional material barrier properties.
In a recent interview, GSK the makers of Advil announced that they will be reducing the plastic in more than 80 million Advil bottles by 20%, resulting in a Reduction of nearly 500,000 pounds of plastic in the environment.
While we still have a long way to go in furtherance of a greener environment, we already have quite a few HDPE packer bottles available and working on completing the line in short order.
Make an impact with Reduced Weight Bottles (Up to 24% Reduction) and Closures (Up to 11% Reduction). Your clients are depending on your commitment to the environment, so be the leader you were meant to be!
