Reading time: ca. 3 min. | An article by Lisa Ribka | TUNAP Blog
TUNAP makes another contribution to the circular economy
TUNAP is continuously working on concepts for more sustainability in ingredients, product packaging and application. From 2022, TUNAP will take a further and important step towards sustainability by replacing all of the TUNAP own brand can caps with sustainable PCR caps.
PCR stands for Post Consumer Recycling and thus identifies materials that have been made from recycled plastics. These plastics are obtained from household or commercial waste. Currently, around a third of plastic waste in Europe is processed into new products.
It is important for TUNAP to make a contribution to the circular economy. Therefore, gray recycled product caps are now included in the range. But why are these caps gray now? So far we only know black and colored can caps.
The collected plastic is washed and reduced in size in the disposal center, so that colorful polypropylene (PP) flakes are created. These are melted down and processed into granules, which ultimately have a gray color. TUNAP has expressly decided to use gray recyclate for three reasons:
- The gray cap shows the least color deviations and therefore goes very well with the design of all TUNAP own-brand cans.
- By not using dyes for coloring, TUNAP saves additional resources.
- The main argument in favor of the gray color, however, is its recyclability: black plastics are difficult or impossible to recycle during the sorting process in the disposal center. They therefore mostly end up in what is known as thermal recycling, i.e. they are incinerated and therefore do not contribute to the circular economy.
Gray is the new green
The recycling of plastic waste and the saving of new plastic are perfect building blocks for fulfilling the TUNAP mission. The new can cap is not only made of recycled plastic, but can also be reused.
TUNAP is proud to be able to save 22 tonnes of new plastic in 2022 just by using our PCR caps.
