One-up on the eco scale

Aveda is taking its environmental commitment to the next level with tubes made from a mix of recycled polyethylene and bioresin.

For Aveda, a purveyor of botanical personal-care products, protecting the environment is more than a way of doing business—it’s the only way. That thinking applies equally to Aveda’s products and the containers they’re filled into.

The company’s latest packaging innovation illustrates the point: Aveda Dry Remedy Moisturizing Conditioner and Dry Remedy Moisturizing Masque are now packaged in tubes made from a combination of post-consumer recycled (PCR) HDPE and bioresin. The products relaunched globally in the new tubes in January 2014.

Mike Kennedy, Aveda’s vp of global package development, says “With these tubes, we were able to get to 59 percent post-consumer recycled high-density polyethylene and 41 percent bioresin, which is a combination of linear low density and high-density [polyethylene].”

Using recycled resin in the tubes was a natural progression and improves upon the old Dry Remedy tubes, which were 45 percent PCR HDPE. “At Aveda we’ve always looked to maximize our use of post-consumer recycled plastics as a way of taking that out of the waste stream and reusing it,” Kennedy says.

Aveda started using 100 percent PCR HDPE bottles in 2011 with the launch of its Invati and Stress-Fix product lines. Currently, more than 85 percent of the PET jars and bottles used for Aveda hair-styling and skin-care products contain 100 percent PCR materials.

The interrelated goals of reusing post-consumer plastic and minimizing virgin petrochemical plastics in its packaging drove Aveda to investigate bioresins and how they could be combined with PCR plastic in a material suitable for personal-care tubes.

Bioresin is a “drop-in”

In 2011, Aveda began talks with Brazil-based polymer producer Braskem, which produces what it calls Green Polyethylene using sugarcane ethanol. Significantly, this bio-based plastic performs the same as petrochemical-based HDPE on manufacturing and packaging lines.

Aveda was interested in the bioresin but needed to know how it would fit with existing packaging operations and the supply chain. “We started doing some preliminary testing to see if [the bioresin] was, as advertised, a ‘drop-in’ into our packaging,” Kennedy says. “A drop-in means no changes in settings [and] no tooling modifications.”

The tests proved the biopolymer would require no changes to Aveda’s operations—and no changes to the tube-manufacturing line at tube supplier CCL Plastic Packaging.

“The tubes are made on existing manufacturing equipment,” Kennedy says. “The body of the tube is extruded, and the head of the tube, which is compression molded, is welded onto the sleeve.” The bottom of each tube remains open, for filling. CCL silk-screens and caps the PCR/bioresin tubes before shipping them to Aveda’s Blaine, MN, plant, for filling and sealing.

Kennedy declines to reveal line speeds for the fill-and-seal operation but says there’s “no difference” between running the old tubes and the new ones, and no equipment modifications were needed.

Aveda’s packaging line is semi-automatic, with empty tubes fed manually into a magazine at the beginning of the line and manual case packing at the other end. Everything in between is automated. The fill volumes are 200ml for the conditioner tube and 150ml for the masque tube.

Multiple eco benefits

Exactly how environmentally friendly are the new Dry Remedy tubes? From a sourcing standpoint, they provide a reuse opportunity for post-consumer plastic while at the same time replacing nonsustainable (petrochemical-based) material with quickly renewing material (sugarcane).

Specifically, the new tubes are “96 percent virgin-petrochemical free,” Kennedy says. The figure is not 100 percent, he explains, because some petrochemical-based starter materials are used to manufacture the biopolymer, and because Braskem produces petrochemical-based resins in the same facilities where it makes its Green Polyethylene.

There’s also a green benefit at the other end of the packaging life cycle, in that the new tubes are just as recyclable as conventional tubes made from 100 percent virgin-petrochemical-based polyethylene. “The Braskem product is in fact a polyethylene, and it’s chemically identical to virgin-petrochemical polyethylene,” Kennedy explains.

The only hitch is that many curbside recycling programs do not yet accept plastic tubes. Nevertheless, Aveda prints the HDPE chasing-arrows symbol on the Dry Remedy tubes together with a description of the packaging material.

“We actually state on the tube that it’s 59 percent post-consumer HDPE and 41 percent bioplastic, and then we tell them that recycling is limited,” Kennedy says. The tube also suggests consumers contact their local recycling programs regarding curbside collection.

If a consumer’s local municipality does not accept tubes, she can bring them back to an Aveda-owned store for collection through the company’s Full Circle recycling program. Since July 2013, the 107 Aveda Experience Center retail locations in the United States have been collecting various hard-to-recycle components from its packaging. In addition to tubes, accepted items include pumps, closures, makeup brushes and some bottles and jars.

Aveda’s partner in Full Circle is g2 revolution LLC, a company that specializes in finding new lives for materials that are challenging to recycle. One of the Full Circle program’s goals is to recycle collected components back into new Aveda packaging and accessories, thus closing the loop.

Going forward, “We’re always working to introduce higher levels of PCR and/or bioresin into other [packaging] components,” Kennedy says, noting that the Dry Remedy tubes were the first Aveda packages to incorporate bioresin.

The company currently is looking for a bio-polypropylene replacement for the conventional polypropylene closures that are now on the Dry Remedy tubes. Making those caps greener, Kennedy says, is “next on our hit list.”

Braskem, 215-841-3100

www.braskem.com

CCL Plastic Packaging, 310-635-4444

www.ccltube.com

g2 revolution LLC, 224-858-4583

www.g2rev.com