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Paper Bottles: the Idea Becomes a Market
The Danish company Paboco and the Swedish start-up Blue Ocean Closures have launched packaging on the market that sets new standards. The bottle is made of paper, cellulose fibres and thin HDPE barrier film.
The paper bottle is already in use for cosmetics and drugstore products.Packaging for beauty products
“Although this special bottle was designed for vitamins and food supplements, it is already being used as packaging for beauty and personal care products,“ says Paboco's Commercial Director, Michael Michelsen. The paper bottle consists of around 85 per cent paper and 15 per cent HDPE inliner as a barrier film, which weighs less than 2 grams. BOC's closure, on the other hand, is made of cellulose fibres and contains an inner liner as a barrier that weighs less than 5 grams.
Barrier film is separated
The weight of the entire packaging with cap is less than 16 grams. Due to the thin barrier, the bottle including cap is recyclable as paper packaging: similar to cardboard packaging with shipping labels and films used today. In the paper packaging stream, the bottle decomposes and the materials separate so that the paper can be recycled. The barrier film is separated and discarded by most factories.
“We see the fibre-based closure as a new standard that can be applied to bottles of different materials,“ explains Ola Tönnberg, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of Blue Ocean Closures.
Like Paboco, more and more companies are presenting new paper-based alternatives or additions to their existing packaging and packaging materials. The company Heinz Hein from Wiesbaden has been importing the “Cantina Goccia“ grape juice from Italy in a paper bottle with a special design since 2023. At 82 grams, the paper bottle is five times lighter than a glass bottle. It contains 77 per cent less plastic than conventional plastic bottles.
Sustainability expert Jenny Walther-Thoss, Senior Consultant Sustainability at Bernd+Partner Consultants, predicts: Use quotas for recyclates in plastic packaging will reinforce the trend towards paperisation, the use of paper-based packaging. And not just in Germany and the EU, where the PPWR adopted in Brussels is prompting companies to adopt new strategies and change materials. In Asian countries such as China, but also in Brazil, there are new regulations and stricter laws to reduce the amount of plastic waste. “Europe is a pioneer, but not alone,“ she says.
