Overall Best Sustainable Packaging and Biobased Packaging: Fraunhofer isc

OVERALL BEST SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING AND BIOBASED PACKAGING: FRAUNHOFER ISC

The worthy winner for Overall Best Sustainable Packaging at the Sustainability Awards 2020 was the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research with their bioORMOCER® biodegradable functional barrier coatings. This innovation also picked up the Biobased Packaging award. We spoke to Dr Sabine Amberg-Schwab, expert scientist for barrier and multifunctional coatings.

PE: Firstly, congratulations on winning the award! What does this mean for you?

SA-S: I am absolutely overwhelmed to be the overall winner of the Sustainability Awards 2020. For me, it is a great honour and a huge appreciation of the work performed by our group here at the Fraunhofer ISC.

And a big thank you to Packaging Europe for organizing the Sustainability Awards. This creates a worldwide public that is incredibly helpful, especially for the presentation of new materials and solutions on the market.

PE: What are the environmental challenges in packaging that your entry addresses, and what impact do you hope it will make?

SA-S: Modern packaging based on plastic or paper is composed of many different materials. Each material performs a specific task in the composite and the thin layers cannot be separated. This impedes recycling, nor can the packaging decompose in nature.

At Fraunhofer ISC, we have developed multifunctional silicate-based barrier coatings (ORMOCER®). We have basically distilled most packaging functions into a single thin layer, thus making multi-layer packaging obsolete. Our coatings (ORMOCER® and bioORMOCER®) are so thin (< 1-3 µm) that the coated packaging materials can be treated as monomaterial packaging. This works for packaging using polymers as well as paper. The properties required for packaging food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals can be achieved, while monomaterial packaging can easily be recycled several times. For compostable packaging, we have further developed bio-based and compostable bioORMOCER® coatings. We use various bioorganic ingredients from green waste, or chitosan. We do not compete for food crops, but upgrade bio-waste and produce high-quality compounds for our coatings.

The basis and model for our new development of the bioORMOCER® is a proven principle from nature: diatoms, or some plants e.g. horsetail, are using silicates to stabilize their cell walls and create very robust structures. We also use silicates and combine them chemically with bioorganic structures, e.g. from green waste, celluloses or chitosan (crabs). As a result, new high-quality compounds (bio-precursors) for the synthesis of coating materials were developed by upgrading bio-waste.

PE: ‘Sustainability’ in packaging is multi-dimensional – both in terms of objectives and challenges. Could you comment on the most important roadblocks you identify from your position in the value chain, and the kinds of solutions you would like to see addressing them?

SA-S: Our modern lifestyle would be unthinkable without packaging. In my opinion, the challenge is that we not only have to reduce packaging materials, make them more environmentally friendly, recyclable or compostable. Rather, we must also educate consumers that packaging is not an annoying waste but a valuable high-performance material.

Our functional coatings can be integrated into state-of-the-art processes to replace current multilayer packaging materials with compostable or recyclable monomaterial solutions. The market potential for these new packaging options is very high. Mass market will reduce production costs to a scale similar to the conventional sector.

On the industry side, I would like to see more willingness to innovate and implement technology transfer in the short term. We have developed highly potent materials that can be adapted and then simply put into production. The basic development work has already been done. So new solutions could be found quickly. I would simply like to see more openness. n