Sustainability refers to growth that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The plastics industry cannot help but become the sustainability focal point and primary benchmark for other industries. Not only is petroleum-based plastics a resource intensive sector in an increasingly resource constrained world, but tons of plastic waste are ending up in landfills everyday.
New plastic designs adopting environmentally friendly materials and advanced manufacturing processes become as much important as providing the same performance and convenience of oil-based plastics for customers.
Making plastics friendly to the environment often conflicts with the traditional functions of plastics and more specifically conflicts with the customers’ demands for convenience.
This new challenge provides an opportunity for company like us to gain competitive advantage through the innovation of new eco-friendly materials and manufacturing processes focusing on sustainability.
At Applied Sustainable Materials, we develop and design our products around the factors that are consistent with the concept of sustainability without sacrificing the all-important needs of our customers.
These factors are:
- Measure and minimize product life cycle resource and energy use
- Optimizing material usage including product-to-package ratios
- Maximize the amount of packaging waste recoverable
- Facilitate recycle, reuse and reduction in factory, during transportation and at customer’s end
- Using materials which are from certified, responsibly managed forests and compostability standard
- Balance retail and consumer value
- Reducing packaging and maximizing the use of renewable or reusable materials