Tetra Pak teams up with Braskem for 'green' HDPE

Under the terms of today's agreement, Braskem will supply Tetra Pak with 5Ktons of the ethanol-based HDPE per year as from 2011. The HDPE will represent 5 percent of Tetra Pak's total HDPE demand, and slightly less than 1 percent of its total plastics purchases.

Company spokesperson Linda Bernier says that even though the pilot initially involves small amounts of the material, Tetra Pak hopes green plastics will eventually become commercially viable.

“Green plastics are more expensive then ordinary plastics so we are looking at how we can make them work across our supply chain,” she told European Plastics News. “We hope there will be more industry investment in this area.”

Bernier says it is too early to predict whether Tetra Pak’s customers will have to incur some of the higher costs.

Braskem will make the material from ethanol derived from sugar cane at its first commercial-scale polyethylene plant, located in Brazil, which is due to come on stream next year.

Tetra Pak says the process will result in “an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with the traditional process for manufacturing polyethylene”, but it did not say by how much.

Sustainability issues will be on the agenda at a special one-day conference - Sustainable Plastics Packaging - organised by European Plastics News in Brussels, Belgium, next week. Click here for more details.