The BPF Visits Berry's Circular Polymers Facility

Earlier this week, the BPF’s Mary Aiken-Wood and Lara Steinhobel attended an open day at Berry’s Leamington Spa Circular Polymers site, hosted by Jamie Riley (Chair of the BPF Sustainability Committee). Jamie gave an overview of Berry’s global business and their sustainability strategy which was a great way to learn more about the recycling industry and Berry’s ambitions to be net zero by 2050.

With plenty of discussion about recycled plastic, improved recyclability, designing for reuse/ refill and reduced carbon footprint, both Lara and Mary left the day feeling inspired and excited about the future of plastic packaging.

Jamie also enjoyed the day, stating:

"Education is key to enhancing the sustainability of packaging solutions, so to have the opportunity to connect with a variety of businesses and organisations like the BPF, to share advice, guidance, and expertise on how best to lower environmental impacts associated with plastics, is hugely important.” 

A key part of the day was the tour of the factory which uses CleanStream™ technology to mechanically process domestically recovered household waste polypropylene back into food-grade packaging in a closed-loop system. The mechanical recycling technology has numerous benefits, such as 35% lower CO2 generation than virgin polypropylene production. It is also possible to create packaging made with materials that will have 20% lower impact than virgin resin.

Lara, who looks after Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) at the BPF, was also very happy to see the OCS posters on site!

On the site tour, visitors can see the whole production process, right through to the final pellets produced by the process.

Later in the day, Jamie shared examples of refill and reuse packaging solutions, such as Abel & Cole’s first refillable plastic milk bottle (which can be refilled up to 16 times before being recycled). If you’re interested in understanding how sustainable your packaging is, you can use the BPF’s FREE sustainable design tool, Packscore, which enables designers to evaluate different iterations of a design, inform choices and be a precurser to more detailed systems prior to a full assessment of a final design. Access Packscore here.

Berry Global said:

"Our Leamington Spa recycling facility uses CleanStream® proprietary technology to provide a circular solution to household collected PP, producing a mechanically recycled PCR suitable, for a wide range of contact sensitive packaging solutions."

The BPF highly recommends interested parties participate in one of the upcoming open days at the Berry Circular Polymers site! Thanks for such an insightful day!

Interested in learning more about Berry’s CleanStream™ Technology? Read more here.

To read more about the BPF’s sustainability work, please see here, or contact Lara Steinhobel ([email protected]).