26 Packaging & Sustainability

FANTASTIC FOIL – The Benefits of Using Foil Packaging

Many people don’t know that aluminium foil is 100 percent recyclable and recycling it saves 95 percent of the energy required to produce aluminium from raw materials. Depending on your location within New Zealand, the local council by-law does allow for foil to be recycled, so long as it has been cleaned of food/grease.

The environmental impacts of aluminium foil are also dramatically less than other packaging materials. Aluminium foil in landfill is virtually non-toxic. It’s inert and will eventually oxidise to aluminium oxide, without emissions of gas or pollutants. It also adds no poisonous compounds to the soil and ground water.

CONFOIL BAKERY PRODUCTS

Confoil offers an extensive range of products to the baking industry including parchment muffin wraps, decorative paper baking moulds, vegetable parchment flan trays and baking paper.

Our muffin wraps are perfect for promoting your muffins and cakes. The stock lines include both plain and printed varieties in white or brown and seasonal prints are also available. These muffin wraps can be customised with your logo and corporate colours, but minimum quantities do apply. The exquisite Italian-made Novacart decorated paper-baking moulds can be used in either the microwave or oven and they hold their shape during the cooking process. The perforated bases eliminate excess moisture allowing you to bake and serve in the mould.

New to the range is the vegetable parchment flan trays, their rolled edges make them suitable for production lines and ideal for use with metal detection devices. These trays are great for your sweet or savoury products and as you bake in the tray you don’t have to clean tins and pans.

Locally manufactured to accredited standards, with all relevant food packaging certifications you can be safe in the knowledge that the packaging is clean and hygienic.

How to Recycle Foil

• Rinse or wipe off any crumbs or food residue from foil trays. To rinse just dunk the tray in the washing up water - no need to run the tap. • Scrunch kitchen foil, tub and pot lids and wrappers together to form a ball - the bigger the ball, the easier it is to recycle.

As well as foil, you can usually recycle these other aluminium items: • Drinks cans • Screw top lids from wine bottles (recycle with the bottle - the cap can be left on) • Takeaway containers and barbeque trays.

Want to know if it’s really foil? Do the scrunch test!

Do the scrunch test to check whether your shiny wrapper is aluminium foil or plastic film: scrunch the wrapper in your hand - if it springs back open it’s not recyclable foil. H

Schools and Suppliers Should Embrace a Circular Economy

It’s time to say goodbye to linear thinking. A linear economy can be defined as when products are made, used, and then disposed of, with their materials lost to landfill. In a recycling economy, the materials from a product or its packaging can be utilised by other suppliers into other products.

Acircular economy takes this even further by creating a process where materials are recycled and reused over and over again by the manufacturer, who takes responsibility for the lifecycle and end-of-life of what they produce. Businesses can effectively take their old products and turn them into new ones.

Starting with a Waste Audit

Recycling is essential for businesses and schools to reduce their environmental footprint and reduce waste disposal costs.

Understanding your current waste habits will allow you to adapt your waste system to be as effective as possible.

Any waste audit should start with a Procurement Assessment.

What goes in must come out. A first step to assessing your organisations waste is to ensure you are not purchasing products that are not recyclable. For most inefficiencies, there is a company making a sustainable solution.

Reduce: Ensure you are engaging with sustainable suppliers.

Reuse: Are there single-use products that could be exchanged for reusable options?

Recycle: Check that there are not more sustainable alternatives for the products you purchase.

You can find handy DIY Waste Audit resources at www.methodrecycling.com/nz

Educating the Future

Kids are the future, so enabling them with the right knowledge around recycling and sustainability now will help protect our environment in the future.

There are organisations around New Zealand that work with schools to help instil sustainability habits within students that they will then carry with them beyond the education system.

Enviroschools is a nationwide programme supported by Toimata Foundation, founding partner Te Mauri Tau, and a large network of regional partners. Early childhood centres and schools commit to a long-term sustainability journey, where tamariki/students connect with and explore the environment, then plan, design, and act in their local places in collaboration with their communities.

Every early childhood centre and school across the country is unique, with its own ecology, history, culture, and community – so Enviroschools looks different in every setting. The journey of connecting with the place and its people is designed and led by each school or centre. You can learn more at www.envirschools.org.nz

Started in Wellington, the successful Your Sustainable School programme is going nationwide with help from the Ministry for the Environment. The programme offers Train the Trainer workshops to help roll out sustainability focussed, climate action, and waste reduction systems at your kura/school or kōhanga/early childhood centre.

How your kura/school or kōhanga/early childhood centre will benefit from the Your Sustainable School programme: • Better recycling systems and lower rates of contamination • New or improved methods to deal with food scraps • Spending less on waste management • Changes to procurement and better opportunities for cafeteria suppliers and cleaners • Empowered students and teachers driving a culture of climate action at school, at home, and in the community

You can learn more at www.sustaintrust.org. nz/your-sustainable-school. H

PACKAGING and sustainability Getting Schooled on Sustainability

Schools around New Zealand are championing the circular economy created by contract caterers providing nutritious lunches to students in Biopak compostable containers, supported by compost collection services.

In 2021, New Zealand caterer, Deejays changed their policy to only work with schools that have signed up to the BioPak Compost Service, thereby reducing their collective waste to landfill.

BioPak products are conceived, designed, and manufactured in alignment with the principles of a circular economy. BioPak products are certified carbon neutral and, after use, can be either recycled or commercially composted. Its production facilities are certified to meet environmental standards, and the company has recently become a certified B-Corporation.

“By choosing BioPak packaging we have offset 32,311kg of carbon and avoided the production of 3,645kg of plastic in just a few months. The schools we work have all really embraced composting, collectively we have diverted tonnes of food scraps and compostable packaging from landfill to make compost instead,” expressed Deejays Managing Director, Stefan Crooks.

Businesses using BioPak packaging can sign up to Compost Connect which diverts all food and BioPak packaging waste from landfill. Backed by the government and building on the BioPak Compost Service, this non-profit initiative is independent and brand-agnostic with the vision to extend composting throughout New Zealand.

All BioPak’s compostable packaging has been certified to biodegrade within 120 days in a commercial compost environment – resulting in nutrient-rich soil. Compost Connect has partnered with commercial compost facilities and waste collection services all around Australia and New Zealand, to provide the missing link to customers in the area.

Composting is the Future

Composting is a proven solution and part of the existing recycling infrastructure that will be further developed to process the seven million tonnes of organic waste currently being landfilled. A commercial compost facility optimises the process of rapid biodegradation of organic material to high quality, toxic-free compost by controlling conditions like shredding material to the same size or controlling the temperature and oxygen levels.

BioPak products along with Compost Connect provide the missing link between organisations and creating a more sustainable future for generations to come. H