When shopping for beauty and bath products, you may gravitate towards the product with the most eye-catching packaging – the shiniest or the boldest. Have you ever thought about where the plastic packaging comes from or where that packaging will end up once you dispose of it? With these fundamental questions in mind, a new collaboration is sure to help uncover answers.
Using advanced recycling technology, LyondellBasell is helping plastics circulate through our global economy rather than end up as waste in the environment or a landfill. By converting end-of-life plastic waste streams into pyrolysis oil feedstock, supplier Plastic Energy provides LyondellBasell with source material used to create CirculenRevive polymers (using a mass balance approach), which can be used in food, medical or packaging applications.
Recently, tube manufacturer Albéa utilized LyondellBasell CirculenRevive polymers to produce tubes and caps for iconic cosmetics brand L’OCCITANE en Provence’s almond shower scrub. The tubes and caps contain plastics for higher-quality recycling and are confirmed as recycling-ready by recycler associations in both Europe and the U.S. due to mono material packaging design. This packaging solution is a great example of converting what would have been discarded plastic waste into a useable and valuable product.
“Circular products are a real solution to the current issues of plastic waste in the environment and climate change,” said Isabelle Trocherie, Business Development Manager at LyondellBasell. “More and more, brand owners are aiming to increase the percentage of recycled plastics in their packaging, generating significant demand for products made with recycled materials from petrochemical manufacturers like us. This collaboration demonstrates cross value chain efforts can have a transformative effect on plastic waste and lowering greenhouse gas emissions during manufacturing.”
LyondellBasell, Plastic Energy, Albéa and L’OCCITANE each have sustainability ambitions to work towards a circular economy for packaging. LyondellBasell’s sustainability efforts focus on three transformational areas: ending plastic waste in the environment, addressing climate change and supporting a thriving society.
For details on how LyondellBasell is advancing a circular economy, click here.
Learn more about our packaging portfolio, click here.