SABIC honored for recycled-content plastic

Saudi Arabia-based Sabic has won a gold Edison Award in the sustainability category for a recycled-content plastic material it developed that is used in frozen food packaging. The awards, established in 1987 by Illinois-based not-for-profit group Edison Universe, are designed to honor global innovation in new products, services and business leadership.

Sabic describes the 2023 award-winning material as a sustainable packaging that uses plastic scrap that otherwise would have ended up in the world’s oceans and waterways. Sabic worked in partnership with Portugal-based packaging maker Polivouga and its customer, seafood products company Nueva Pescanova Group, to create what Sabic calls “the world’s first frozen food packaging solution using [its] certified circular polyethylene from feedstock sourced from ocean-bound plastic.

“I am delighted the work of my team at Sabic has been recognized for this innovative solution,” Sami Al-Osaimi, vice president at Sabic, said at the 2023 Edison Awards ceremony. That event took place in late April in Fort Myers, Florida.

“Ocean-bound plastic is a global concern, which is why the people of Sabic are working to find new uses for these materials and allow them to have a second life,” Al-Osaimi added. “It’s through collaboration with great partners like Polivouga and the Nueva Pescanova Group that we can find ways to create innovative solutions, and it highlights the importance of working together within the industry to find new ways to reduce ocean bound plastics.”

The ocean-bound plastics used in the award-winning product are recovered and sorted through a chemical or advanced recycling process. In such processes, discarded plastics are broken down into their original building blocks so they can be recycled multiple times, Sabic states.

In the past several weeks, Sabic has announced additional end markets for its recycled-content resins and polymers.

In April, Sabic announced a collaboration with Italy-based Garofalo, a pasta manufacturer, along with plastics firms GT Polifilm and Polivouga to develop novel packaging with Sabic’s certified circular polypropylene (PP) material from its TruCircle program.

Sabic says the plastic being used is the first mono-PP pasta packaging material in the market containing 30 percent postconsumer recycled content. Garofalo introduced the first pasta bags made from the new packaging to stores in March.

Sabic also announced this month it was working in collaboration with Estonia-based Estiko Packaging Solutions and Coldwater Prawns of Norway to develop and implement a highly sustainable new packaging pouch for frozen prawns.

The pouch is made from a multilayer film using what Sabic says is a circular-certified “random polymer grade of Sabic PP Qrystal with an ocean-bound plastic content of around 60 percent.”

Sabic says its certified circular polymers form part of the company’s TruCircle porfolio. That business line includes products that are either designed for recyclability, mechanically recycled products, certified renewable polymers from bio-based feedstock or closed-loop initiatives to recycle plastic back into “high-quality applications” and help prevent valuable used plastics from becoming waste.

This is the third consecutive year Sabic has been recognized by the Edison awards. This year, the company won three gold and two bronze awards in different categories.