Trio combine to develop refuse bag from industrial scrap

Global – Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, flexible packaging manufacturer Bemis Company, Inc. and converter Polykar Inc. have teamed up to develop refuse bags made from post-industrial plastic scrap. These were used last month to clean up beaches around the USA during Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup.

The bags ‘are opening doors for new, previously difficult-to-recycle packaging formats to enter the recycling stream’, Dow states.

Scrap materials collected by Bemis from industrial sources were sent to Polykar, which combined the reclaimed plastics with Dow’s RETAIN technology to create the resin used to manufacture the bags.

Dow is a founding member of The Trash Free Seas Alliance, a global initiative uniting industry, science and conservation leaders behind identifying the causes and developing land-based solutions to prevent waste from entering the world’s oceans and waterways.

‘It’s an exciting step forward to be able to use recycled materials to collect and properly dispose of marine debris,’ says Ocean Conservancy’s executive vice president Emily Woglom.

According to Dow, RETAIN technology helps to divert packaging waste from landfill or incineration by enabling polyethylene-based barrier packaging to be recycled more effectively.