Sustainable Packaging

International Paper enters the recycled linerboard manufacturing market with what it touts as "the world's largest recycled linerboard machine." The machine produces up to 1겨 tons/day at IP's Mansfield, LA, mill. Box makers respond positively.

Recyclers and packagers counterattacked against the latest and probably the most significant media rebuke to recycling. A full battle-dress press conference July 25 in Washington, DC, was staged by the National Recycling Coalition in response to an article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine entitled, "Recycling is Garbage." Published June 30, the lengthy article by a Times staff reporter hammered at the theme that recycling is not economical.

Unlike Europe, where the issue of solid waste focuses almost entirely on packaging, the U.S. looks at the total waste stream, said J. Winston Porter, president of The Waste Policy Center and former EPA official.

The longstanding battle to reform the decades-old Delaney Clause, which prohibits the use of any carcinogenic additive in processed food, is moving forward in Congress.

Bell-Mark (Pine Brook, NJ) has added a quick-drying water-based ink formulation to its line of pre-inked disposable cartridges. This environmentally safe ink can be used for date coding, pricing or imprinting on most nonabsorbent substrates, including films and foils.

In preparation for a discussion on international eco-labeling standards, a coalition of 12 associations organized by the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), is advocating standards similar to the "Green Guides" of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Overall, recycling programs are increasing for the nation's restaurants, and steel can recycling is playing a major role, according to a recent press conference in Chicago sponsored by the Steel Recycling Institute, Pittsburgh, PA.