Tag Archives: ENSO Bottles

ENSO RESTORE

ENSO Plastics Drives Innovation to Address Plastic Pollution

ENSO Plastics announces solutions to make plastics more responsible, giving brands more environmental possibilities for plastic packaging.

Mesa, AZ — (SBWIRE) — 05/07/2013 — In the ongoing pursuit to address the growing global plastic pollution issue, environmental plastic solution provider ENSO Plastics announces two new technologies ENSO RENEW™ and ENSO RESTORE™ that have change the way plastics are used around the globe.

ENSO RENEW™ is a unique Renewable Thermo Polymer (RTP) derived from the waste process of agriculture, with a carbon footprint 75% lower than polyethylene. It is a high heat renewable biopolymer that results in home and industrial compostable as well as marine degradable plastics. ENSO RENEW™ is designed to meet the needs of applications looking for renewable solutions to further sustainability goals utilizing fast growing plant based material. Blending ENSO RENEW™ with traditional plastics combines bio-based content with the durability of traditional plastics making them ideal for partially renewable solutions that are durable.

ENSO RESTORE™ is the latest development of biodegradable additives offering superior improvements to biodegradable performance and process-ability/compatibility and eliminating the historical higher scrap rates of competing biodegradable additives, creating a huge environmental and cost advantage. ENSO RESTORE™ is a leading edge technology that accelerates the natural biodegradation without any disruption to disposal method or performance. ENSO RESTORE™ biodegradable additives work with light weighted packaging and thin film applications as well as all major resin types: PE, PP, PET, PS, Rubber, Nitrile, polyurethane and more.

While other companies are simply pursuing the best way to sell first generation products and solutions, ENSO™ is driving innovations by actively creating new solutions for our future generations and effectively dealing with plastic waste.

About ENSO Plastics
ENSO Plastics, LLC is an environmental plastics solutions company with proprietary biodegradable and biobased solutions, bringing to market cost competitive cutting-edge solutions to meet the market demands of sustainability, home or industrial compostability, landfill biodegradability, marine degradability and recyclability.

ENSO Plastics has a mission to solve the global plastics pollution issue by bringing the best technologies to market, finding solutions with the greatest and most productive impact for the plastics industry and providing answers that can be trusted to integrate seamlessly – a platform that companies can stand behind with confidence.

If you are interested in learning more about ENSO Plastics technologies, please visit us at http://www.ensoplastics.com or call (866) 936-3676 / (602) 639-4228.

 
Important California Notice
California law prohibits the sale of plastic packaging and plastic products that are labeled with the terms ‘biodegradable,’ ‘degradable,’ or ‘decomposable,’ or any form of those terms, or that imply in any way that the item will break down, biodegrade or decompose in a landfill or other environment. These restrictions apply to all sales in or into the State of California, including such sales over the Internet.

Regulation: Friend or Foe? Is it coming soon to your town?

We have heard regulatory agencies wanting to do more to protect the consumer and the environment alike.  And while regulation is a necessity for a properly functioning society, what does the current trends of regulation do for your business?  What does it do for our economy?  What does it do for innovation and ultimately the environment?

Unfortunately, there is also an additional qualifying question anyone familiar with the way the world spins around will ask themselves… “it depends on which private business is lobbying for, and what agenda…”  Todays environmental issues have an opportunity to be treated with innovation and forward thinking.  Perhaps never before in our history have we been more prepared and evolved to address the real problems relating to the environmental issues we face.  Words like; Life Cycle Analysis, Carbon Footprint, Sustainability, green movement…the list goes on-all in the name of greening up business and consumer habits.  But at the end of the day, what has been the net result?  Because in the end, what is paramount is results-positive results.

How is regulating this “green movement” helping?  Today, innovations have to answer questions of legitimacy and solid science.  Federal agencies like EPA, FTC, FDA are all both educating and becoming more educated on what the market trends are doing, and what materials are available to help green up materials and processes.  They demand companies to sufficiently demonstrate the validity of their claims, and help to curb “green washing” for the irresponsible opportunists looking to only capitalize on our consumer base sincerely wanting to do the right thing.

We at ENSO take this demonstration of legitimacy and solid science behind our innovative material VERY seriously.  We have engaged top-of-their-field scientific minds to aid in the quest to help our innovation receive the understanding and market reception it warrants.  Sometimes innovation outpaces conventional understanding, and what helps bridge the gap between innovation and acceptance is education and credibility.  Some of these processes take more time than desired, but in the end, things that are worthwhile and lasting often endure hurtles.  Many of our past innovations were looked at as a “pipe dream” only to turn into life changing propositions for markets-cars, electricity, a round earth etc. all took time for conventional wisdom to catch up to these innovations.

Today, I believe the market is ripe to receive an increase in both innovation and education, with responsible regulatory agencies sifting through relevant information to help environmental and economic impacts in our market.  Although the budgets in many agencies have been drastically reduced, they are hard at work to create a viable market which will include an earth friendly future marketplace.  Hopefully this work combined with everyone’s convictions and individual effort will drastically reduce the length of time processes can take, so we can more efficiently make innovative materials a positive conversion in our market.  So all can answer, regulation is a friend, not a foe.  One thing is for sure, we need regulation, as long as it helps an ever evolving marketplace.  Indeed nothing these days seem to remain static, questions and answers will always evolve, and so will regulatory process.

 

PEC to Develop Biodegradation Standard for Plastic Additives

Plastics Environmental Council to Develop Biodegradation Standard for Plastics Additives and New Certification Seal

Biodegradable Additives Play Critical Role in Helping Solve the Plastics in Landfill Issue

Milton, GA, OCTOBER 24, 2011 — The Plastics Environmental Council (PEC) today announced the
sponsorship of a research study to produce the first standard specification for the landfill
biodegradation of petroleum- and natural gas-derived plastics that have been treated with additives
that enhance biodegradation. The PEC is undertaking the development of the biodegradation standard
specification to build confidence in the efficacy of plastics additives with regulators, consumers and
businesses. Plastic additives that speed up the breakdown of plastic in landfills, without affecting their
performance during use, are critically important to helping reduce the volume of plastic waste in
landfills.

Despite the fact that readily consumer-separated items such as soda and milk bottles are collected and
recycled at increasing rates, the majority of plastics simply cannot be recycled for a variety of reasons
including contamination, collection and logistics costs, second end-use limitations, etc. According to
the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 13 million tons of plastic containers and packaging
ended up in landfills in 2008. The PEC’s effort to develop a landfill biodegradation specification standard
is intended to address this issue.

To develop the standard specification, PEC has partnered with Georgia Tech and North Carolina State
University to conduct a large-scale research and development program, headed by a leading expert on
landfill technology, Professor Morton Barlaz of North Carolina State. Professor Barlaz and his team will
study waste degradation rates under both laboratory and field (landfill) conditions of petroleum- and
natural gas-derived plastics that have been treated with PEC member companies’ additives to produce
the standard specification. Once developed, the standard specification will reliably project the landfill
biodegradation rates for a given PEC-certified product in a given range of landfills over a given range of
moisture conditions with much more certainty than is possible today.

“While we already know from various independent laboratory tests that our member companies’
additives are expected to be effective at speeding up the biodegradation of petroleum and natural gasderived
plastics in landfills, this will be the first-of-its-kind study to verify biodegradation rates of plastic
waste treated with such additives under both laboratory and field conditions,” said Senator Robert
McKnight, PEC Board chairman. “The new standard will allow us to develop a simple certification seal
that will inspire confidence in these additives from businesses, consumers and regulators.”

While most plastics from hydrocarbons are recyclable, they are not biodegradable without the addition
of chemical additives and remain in landfills virtually forever. Chemical additives, many of which are
approved for use by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), are added to the plastic resins during the
manufacturing process and do not alter the final product’s performance, are undetectable by the end
user, and products containing them can be processed through current recycling methods.

The PEC expects the landfill biodegradability certification seal to be available in approximately 18
months.

PEC member companies include Wincup, Ecologic, Bio-Tec Environmental, ECM Biofilms, ENSO Plastics,
Pure Plastics, C-Line Products, Inc., Ecolab, and FP International.

About the Plastics Environmental Council
The PEC is a consortium of businesses, independent scientists and academics, engineers, landfill and compost
operators, and environmental groups. Our goal is to assist our members in promoting the efficacy of state-of-themarket
technology to facilitate the biodegradation of conventional petroleum-derived plastics in landfills and
related disposal environments. For more information, please visit: http://pec-us.org/.

Landfill Biodegradable Products engage in Carbon Negative Activity

POINT OF CLARIFICATION ON CARBON NEGATIVE ACTIVITY

The phrase carbon negative activity can have many interpretations that I feel needs clarification.  Carbon is sequestered in plastic as we all know, but when the plastic is biodegradable, the off gassing of methane (comprised of C02 and Methane) from the biodegradation process is combustible.  If this bio-gas is utilized in methane to energy generators, the result is considered a “green” source of energy.  However, carbon is still emitted from the process, the benefit is that we used energy from bio-gas instead of using energy from say…coal.  Utilizing methane from a landfill is only part of a possible process of creating a carbon negative cycle.  There’s a major running debate right now as to the carbon positivity/negativity of landfill biogas generation.  The back-to-back papers at the SPC conference last Spring in San Diego by Adam Gendell and Mort Barlaz spoke to two sides of this issue.  As more data flows in from many different projects currently underway, we will have a more definitive understanding of how to apply it to carbon life-cycle analysis, in the ultimate goal of realizing carbon negativity!

In the hopefully not so distant future, we will have plastic that has come from renewable sources that are not land-crop depended, but will still utilize carbon available in our atmosphere, to help in the carbon sequestering process.  ONLY when carbon is being pulled out of the atmosphere, and less carbon is being put back into it (by engaging activities like methane to energy), can someone be truly carbon negative.  Having an ENSO biodegradable plastic is part of the whole picture that is entirely up to progressive sourcing of material, and responsible end of life process.

Thank you,

Del Andrus

 

 

Part #1 – A new look at Zero Waste

 

zero waste

I often hear the term “Zero Waste” in sustainability conversations, but what is zero waste and how can a business achieve it?
We must all understand that any living organism creates bi-products, commonly referred to as “waste”. From a plant that produces oxygen and biomass, to animals that produce carbon dioxide and excrement and finally humans that create immense amounts of waste. Over millions of years the earth has dealt with these “bi-products” of life and created systems to convert this bi-product into a value. In nature there is no such word as waste.

For humans, waste is a constant reality. Our ingenuity has created processes and materials that do not integrate with the natural cycles and have no value – this is not a bi-product – it is simply waste. Plastics are a sore example of human waste. Don’t misunderstand my intentions, I do not mean to state that our products are bad, just that we do not handle them properly. For example: in 2009 the US generated 30 million tons of plastic waste. Over 90% of this plastic is buried in our landfills filling up over 220,000,000 cubic yards of space. Every year this number compounds and we are forced to continue finding new space to bury this waste.

Keep in mind that waste is simply a by-product that has no value, and EVERY system has byproducts. Let’s look at a few ways companies today can create products and processes that produce byproduct, but no waste.
1. Reduce material use – I know! Reducing does not prevent waste – but it does reduce the amount of waste you will need to address so it is key to sustainability and zero waste. Can you buy in concentrate or bulk? How about light weighting your packaging? Can you reduce multiple layers of packaging to just one?

2. Recycle – Create products that integrate whenever possible with community collected recycling programs. Look internally at your processes to determine where you can re-use scrap or send to recyclers (many recyclers pay top dollar for industrial recyclables). Most common recycled plastics are PET and HDPE.
3. Evaluate – Audit your systems regularly to prevent excess energy use, unnecessary product waste, and unturned inventory. A small air leak in a compressed system is often overlooked. Can you continue using existing product labels rather than wasting them when doing a redesign?
4. Educate – Educate your staff and customers on how to create less waste. Implement educational programs and reward success.
5. Determine product end of life scenarios – Where does your product go after use? Ensure your product is designed for that end of life and creates a value in that scenario. In the example of plastics going to a landfill, ensure those plastics are biodegradable in the landfill. (stay tuned next month to learn how biodegradable can create zero waste)

This is just a brief listing of areas you can change to create zero waste in your environment. Keep in mind that you will always have byproducts, but you need not have waste. Next month we will explore in more detail how biodegradable ENSO plastics are part of the zero waste solution.

Fixing the Gap in the 3R’s

 

biodegradable plastic and recyclable ENSO

 

I’m often asked which option is better for end-of-life plastic packaging; should we recycle it or have it biodegradable? As is true with any sound environmental solution, the answer is often not as easy as choosing one option over another. The real answer to this question is: what is the problem and what end-of-life option(s) is going to solve that problem?

When it comes to solving the plastic pollution problem; a problem that we are already waist deep into, the best solution will not be those that are designed for the perfect world or the best case scenarios. There are a lot of ideas and beliefs that we should be coming up with a silver bullet perfect world solution, and we could do that – some even have. The reality is that we don’t live in a world with only one way of doing things and we certainly shouldn’t think that only one solution is going to solve plastic pollution. Many of those “perfect world” solutions find a short lived life because they don’t start solving the problem with where we are today. A sound solution for this issue has to be implementable today and allow the flexibility to take us into the improvements of tomorrow. So, a long way to get to the short answer to what is the best end-of-life option is we should be doing both: products that are both recyclable and biodegradable.

Traditional in-the-box thinking pushes us to think about solutions to problems as picking one option over another. What we are learning when it comes to making true environmental changes is that we need to think about things more as a whole – how does the result of something effect both the upstream and downstream of any given system or process? At ENSO we strive to think outside-the-box. To solve the plastic pollution issue, we need to implement solutions that take into consideration a number of factors.

For example; we’ve all heard about, and hopefully try to live by, the 3 R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. These are important words we should all commit to implementing in our lives. Reducing our consumption would be a huge key in solving the plastic pollution issue we face. However, the reality with the growth of population, consumption and packaging “Reducing” is not really moving us in a positive direction. Sure, it’s a great short-term solution for manufacturers and brands to reduce the amount of plastics being used in their packaging. But in the end, it’s not really stopping the growth of plastic used – it is simply slowing it down for a bit. As populations grow in size and as parts of the world race to catch up to western living standards we will continue to see growth in the overall use of plastic packaging.

Reusing has even less of a positive impact towards reducing the volumes of plastics consumed and discarded each year. Sure, we should strive to reuse as much as we can but the trend is moving towards a more disposable approach. Here in the United States, “reusing is not embraced nearly enough to make much of a positive impact.

This leads us to the third “R”, or Recycling. Recycling is where most of our efforts come together. It’s hard not to find a recycle bin or sign encouraging us to recycle. Recycling is sexy and makes us feel good and it’s very tangible. You can do your part, by recycling, and feel like you are part of the solution. We have spent decades building recycling infrastructures and businesses and implementing legislation to help support and improve recycling.

However; the reality that we must recognize is that there is a BIG gap in the 3 R’s. The gap is that we still send a whole heck of A LOT of plastics to landfills. These are the same plastics that are technically recyclable and reusable but we send upwards of 93% of all plastics into landfills to get buried and forgotten. What can we do about this? Well, we could just ignore the problem; but, that isn’t going to get us closer to solving it. “Reduce, reuse and recycle” should be front and center to solving this issue; but even then, we still end up with too many plastics going into landfills.

At ENSO we believe we have engineered the solution for the gap in the 3R’s. A recyclable and biodegradable plastic closes the gap within the 3 R’s. ENSO Plastics has developed a family of biodegradable additive resins; which, when blended with standard polymers, result in plastic packaging which is fully recyclable and will not contaminate the recycle stream. If recycling happens to not be available, the plastic packaging that is enhanced with the ENSO additive, when placed into a landfill of soil environment full of microbes, will naturally biodegrade just like other organic material in that same environment.

ENSO technology is a revolutionary environmental break through and allows brands, manufacturers, retailers and consumers to do something about the plastic pollution issue today.

Sincerely,
Danny Clark
President
ENSO Plastics

1 out of 4 Shoppers Buy Green Products

biodegradable plastics ENSO

 

A shopper experience study done by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research has revealed some anticipated results. The results of the study showed that 1 in four shoppers are willing to pay more for a product if they feel they are contributing to helping the environment. As far as age goes, 18 -34 year old shoppers take more time to embrace purchases that benefit the environment than shoppers between the ages of 35-44 and 55-64. This is great news for those wanting to find a earth friendly alternative to traditional plastics like ENSO biodegradable plastics.
It’s often assumed that college aged shoppers are likely to jump on the trend of environmentally friendly products but the study shows they are not willing to pay more to do so. This is not so surprising considering most college students are on a budget, however even college students will fork out the money for products they must have. College aged shoppers do not stay in their niche for long and this is something to consider. Going green can expand your market; if your product has typically been targeted to that age group…going green can expand your market to the older consumers who are more likely to pay a premium for green. This is something to consider when marketing your made over product.
Products that give not only supply a functional need but an emotional benefit make a product feel worthwhile to consumers. It’s these types of products that grow return customers because there is an emotional attachment or an emotional need for them to purchase the product. Figuring out how to position your product, and market that emotional factor is unique to every product but once you find it, you will succeed. This can directly apply to those companies who target their products to younger, say college aged shoppers. If you are wanting to go green and be successful your product needs to give consumers especially college aged kids on a budget, that emotional benefit so that they will feel they can spend the premium.

 

http://www.beverageworld.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39183:… 7/20/2011

ENSO Plastics smart marketing at PACK EXPO

ENSO Plastics won over PACK EXPO attendees and exhibitors with their simple yet in your face marketing strategy.

A young woman, wearing a cleverly designed skirt from single use plastic waste and a sign stated “Is your packaging Biodegradable. ENSO plastics” As she walked down the aisles, heads turned, and people had to ask “Okay, you gotta tell me, What is ENSO?”

With the thousands of dollars spent  adorning booths with hopeful marketing tactics, its refreshing that something as simple as in your face, emotionally jarring marketing can get your message across more successfully.

Got a photo of the plastic dress girl? Make sure to post it on ENSO’s facebook wall!

 

girl in plastic outfit at PACK EXPO

The Plastic Monster will be taking over PACK EXPO

ENSO Plastics is bringing the Heat to PACK EXPO this year

It’s no secret that ENSO Plastics’ biodegradable plastic technology brings the most desirable premium feature to any plastic product on the market wanting to go green. Interested? Intrigued? If you are attending PACK EXPO in Vegas get excited, because ENSO Plastics will be there and making noise in a way that you have not seen before. ENSO is bring the Plastic monster to PACK EXPO!

If you haven’t heard of PACK EXPO you’re missing out because PACK is North America’s largest packaging and processing show. With the opportunity to see 1600 world class suppliers, explore cutting edge technologies for all vertical markets , and discover a brand new array of products, why would you miss out on expanding your network and broadening your packaging knowledge?!

PACK EXPO 2011 | September 26–28, 2011
Las Vegas Convention Center | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
http://www.packexpo.com/pelv2011/public/enter.aspx

Whether you are just attending, sporting a booth, or if we have intrigued you enough to make last minute plans to attend, I hope to see you in Vegas! Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like me to visit your booth or would like to personally meet and engage an ENSO Business Development professional.