To the Bumble Bee Seafood Corporate, bettering the sustainability and the standard of your packaging can cross hand in hand.
Closing week, the corporate introduced new outer packaging for its multipack tuna cans made from readily recyclable paperboard. Bumble Bee stated that it’s the first shelf-stable seafood logo to interchange its shrink wrap packaging with a recyclable selection.
The paperboard is made from 100% recycled subject matter with no less than 35% post-consumer content material, and is qualified through the sustainability nonprofit Wooded area Stewardship Council. The brand new packaging has debuted on 23 SKUs, from 4- to 12-can applications.
The brand new sustainable packaging was once if truth be told a favorable consequence to a subject matter that Bumble Bee was once having with current 25-year-old shrink wrap packaging equipment at its Santa Fe Springs, California, manufacturing facility, in keeping with Leslie Hushka, senior vice chairman of world company duty.
“We had been having the apparatus demanding situations in factories with our earlier system, a large number of downtime,” Huska stated. “It was once getting tricky for us to get provider on that piece of kit. You already know, it was once getting up there in years so we made up our minds to have a look at choices.”
Bumble Bee made up our minds to change to multipacker equipment from R.A. Jones that allowed it to faucet into new packaging capability and abandon shrink wrap. It labored with the equipment producer to customise the apparatus, Hushka stated.
The corporate contemplated whether or not the brand new equipment was once well worth the important monetary funding and logistical changes, Bumble Bee president and CEO Jan Tharp stated in a video commentary. It discovered, despite the fact that, that the transfer clear of plastic aligned with its goal of serving to to revive the sea.
By way of shifting from shrink wrap to paperboard, Bumble Bee stated it’s going to get rid of 23 million items of plastic waste according to 12 months.
Past the sustainability side, Bumble Bee noticed different advantages to adopting the brand new paperboard packaging. For one, the carton permits the goods’ barcodes to be scanned extra simply than the shrink wrap, and to be put on retailer cabinets in two other orientations, the corporate famous.
But it surely additionally allowed for a visible logo refresh, in keeping with Hushka.
The brand new paperboard packaging options vivid colours and an image of the tuna cans, in conjunction with dietary data in some way that appears clearer than was once imaginable at the shrink wrap.
“We had been in a position to in point of fact installed some crowd pleasing graphics and new designs at the field that simply weren’t imaginable in shrink-wrapped applications,” Hushka stated.
As a seafood corporate, Bumble Bee’s packaging inventions are a part of its general ocean recovery technique, in keeping with Hushka. Packaging has taken on better center of attention at Bumble Bee since 2020, when it set a function to have 98% recyclable packaging through 2025. This modification from shrink wrap to paperboard will transfer the emblem from 96% to 98% readily recyclable packaging, surpassing the function timeline through 3 years, the corporate stated.
Each the brand new paperboard packaging and the steel tuna cans are curbside recyclable.
“We need to be sure that none of our packaging leads to a landfill or leads to the sea,” Hushka stated.
The following a part of Bumble Bee’s effort to toughen the whole sustainability of its packaging is more challenging: making it all simply recyclable. Huska cited an organization survey that discovered 67% of shoppers sought after its product packaging to be extra recyclable.
The emblem has mentioned with recycling teams the trouble of constructing packaging out of latest fabrics which are suited to the U.S. recycling gadget. Bumble Bee could also be in dialog with recycling business gamers and advocates about result in structural adjustments within the U.S. recycling gadget in order that packaging builders can create higher recyclable plastics.
“Should you consider it, the U.S. recycling gadget was once designed 50 years in the past. It was once designed for paper and bottles. It isn’t designed for the kind of versatile plastics that we’ve got lately,” Hushka stated.
In conjunction with ease of recyclability, it is very important Bumble Bee that any new packaging additionally handle freshness. In comparison to a snack meals, recent meals like seafood steadily require extra insulation and subject matter to make sure top freshness. Bumble Bee continues to discover this because it develops extra recyclable packaging for its different merchandise like tuna in pouches.
“We’re taking a look at distinctiveness plastics the place the tuna is if truth be told positioned in there after which taken thru prime power simply to be sure that that product is totally sterilized. Choice fabrics do not face up to that procedure smartly and do not proceed to offer protection to the product for the shelf lifestyles that we in point of fact require,” Hushka stated. “In order we take a look at the fabrics, we’ll have to place them thru the ones paces.”
