A specialist of plastic bottles for the cosmetics market, Qualiform had been working for several years on eco-designed models, without compromising on aesthetics. The launch of rCarbon bottles, the first PET bottles derived from recycled carbon emissions, is a milestone in the company’s decarbonization project.
Towards carbon neutrality
“Our CSR policy aims to positively maximize our local impact, while minimizing our global environmental footprint. Materials and their end-of-life represent more than 50% of our total carbon footprint. Therefore, working on these means having a major impact on reducing our carbon footprint and that of our customers. That is the context of our innovation, and it is the point we need to work on to achieve our shared goal of carbon neutrality in 2050, with an initial stage of 35% reduction by 2030”, says Stéphane Perrollier, CEO of Qualiform.
It is not the first time the company had worked to develop different solutions using more environmentally-friendly materials. After launching the first bottles derived from chemical recycling – carried out by Eastman – in 2020, Qualiform is now offering Ultraclear rPET bottles obtained from the mechanical recycling of uncoloured PET bottles.
“As far as cosmetics are concerned, our challenge is to reconcile aesthetics and sustainability. Offering fully transparent, recycled, low-carbon materials is an important part of our strategy. We are very proud of our Ultraclear rPET, as it is unrivalled on the market. Today, we are broadening our offering with this rCarbon PET, to further reduce the carbon footprint of our customers’ products,” explains Julie Welté, Sales and Marketing Director.
Carbon emission recycling
Qualiform’s rCarbon bottles contribute to moving towards carbon neutrality, because they involve greenhouse gas absorption. They are based on company Plastipak’s PET manufacturing expertise: 30% of this PET is derived from CO2. This technology developed by LanzaTech captures carbon emissions and converts them into mono ethylene glycol (MEG).
“This PET is made up of two monomers, 30% MEG and 70% TPA [1]. In our case, 100% of the MEG comes from capturing the CO2 emissions of factories. This is a huge technological step forward”, emphasizes Julie Welté.
The MEG manufactured by LanzaTech is supplied to Plastipak, a PET resin producer based in Italy, who delivers the final material to Qualiform to produce the bottles on a large scale: 800 tonnes were manufactured last March.
“This helps reduce CO2 emissions by 22%, compared to conventional PET – the equivalent of 620 g of CO2 saved for one kilo of PET material. This way, we offer our customers the opportunity to significantly reduce their Scope 3 carbon footprint without aesthetic compromises, and we are taking a major step towards our shared goal of carbon neutrality by 2050”, adds Stéphane Perrollier.
An innovation to complement rPET
Qualiform sees this solution as a complementary approach to the use of rPET.
“The most virtuous solution remains mechanical recycling: at Qualiform, one in two PET bottles is produced from 100% mechanically recycled material. But there is not enough waste for the whole chain, and depending on the bottle colour chosen, a mix with virgin PET is still needed to offset the colour impact of the PCR recycled material. Working on the carbon footprint of virgin PET therefore remains necessary,” adds Julie Welté.
To go one step further and cover a broad spectrum of demands, the company now offers virgin-PET-based rCarbon bottles integrating Ultraclear PCR. The price of this new material is equivalent to that of mechanically recycled PET.
“This contributes to facilitating access to it. We aim to systematically offer this new rCarbon material. Our innovation is available for all our standard products and all new projects,” concludes Stéphane Perrollier.
