Bioplastic tube a real clean breakthrough
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Sustainability Allveggie FKuR Kunststoff GmbH Prabhupada tectubesBrushing you teeth has just gotten to be whole lot cleaner for the environment with recent introduction of the world’s first truly biodegradable toothpaste tubes by leading Swedish tubemaker Tectubes AB, which are currently used to package Prabhupada’s brand of all-natural toothpaste developed by Allveggie in Emmaboda, Sweden.
Made from a blend of the specialty customized biolpoymers formulated by German bioplastics developer FKuR Kunststoff GmbH, the injection-molded, extruded tubes are being used to package the Free Trade-certified, fluoride- and glycerine-free toothpaste—a mixture of baking soda, hemp oil, stevia, thyme, eucalyptus, spearmint and other all-natural substances—originally developed in the early 1990s.
”It is important for us to emphasize our ecological awareness and send a signal,” says Allveggie’s Swedish manager Stefan Lundbladh.
“By using bioplastics we can fulfil our wish to have an overall environmentally friendly solution,” says Lundbladh, pointing out that every single ingredient contained in the toothpaste is fully biodegradable.
“Using bioresins for such an application was a real challenge for us, because we needed to have compatibility between the different parts, and match them together with good conversion properties,” relates Johan Barkentin, project leader at Tectubes, which manufactures about 300 million plastic packaging tubes per year at factories in Sweden and North America.
”By using FKuR’s expertise and range of sustainable bioplastics we were able to reach a very satisfactory solution,” says Barkentin, complimenting the new tubes for “excellent mechanical properties.”
Adds FKuR’s Scandinavian sales rep Bjarne Högström: “This development shows the versatility of biopolymers and how far biopolymers have progressed with respect to processability and final characteristics.”
Founded in 2003 in Willich, Germany, FKuR produces and markets three main proprietary brands of technical bioplastics derived from renewable resources, including Bio-Flex (polylactic acid compound), Biograde (cellulose ester compound) and Fibrolon (natural fiber reinforced polymers).
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