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Innovia offers an increasingly broader range of sustainable, eco-friendly packaging films and foils for the tobacco sector. Credit: Innovia Films.
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Alicia Crane, global product manager, tobacco at Innovia Films. Credit: Innovia Films
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Eko Setiawan, BMJ’s senior regional sales manager. Credit: BMJ
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A few eco-friendly packaging options already exist, but most cigarette manufacturers are not exactly rushing to adopt them.
Eco-friendly cigarette packaging appears to be a trend that is only slowly catching on among manufacturers. At this point, primarily small, niche brand owners are the ones with the enthusiasm, and perhaps idealism, to experiment with such materials. On the other hand, most mainstream brands are not jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon just yet.
Nevertheless, a few years ago, BAT announced that its cigarette brands Natural American Spirit and Pall Mall introduced eco-friendly packaging. Then, in 2020, BAT followed that up with a press release saying that plastic packaging across all of its brands would become recyclable by 2025. Similar plans are reportedly underway at PMI as well.
The average consumer commonly equates the term “eco-friendliness” with “100% harmless to the environment”. That is a misconception, of course. Even an eco-friendly packaged product will have a certain carbon footprint; renewable resources may incorporate a certain percentage of non-renewable ones. And just because a material claims to be recyclable doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it is, in fact, going to be recycled. The same goes for the - in our opinion - overused term “compostable”. Most packaging products carrying that label today cannot simply be thrown onto the backyard compost heap, but must be collected and composted in a specialized industrial facility under controlled conditions. And only a tiny fraction of discarded compostables ever make it to that treatment anyway; the bulk ends up in landfills or in incinerators together with all that other non-compostable packaging waste.
Then there is the aspect that eco-friendly packaging all by itself cannot always accomplish its job. For example, in the case of quite delicate products such as cigarettes or leaf tobacco, the packaging must be able to not only protect the merchandise from transport damage and environmental factors (e.g. moisture or oxidation) to increase shelf life, but also must preserve the volatile aromas. A C-14 carton may indeed be made of eco-friendly recycled and unbleached cardboard, but it also still needs an inner plastic liner to protect its contents. Even under the most ideal of circumstances, perceived eco-friendliness is therefore often bound to be a compromise between renewable, recyclable, or biodegradable materials and non-renewable (or non-recyclable, non-degradable) materials. Yet as they say: every step towards eco-friendliness is a step in the right direction.
“All industries – and tobacco is no exception – are actively investigating how to conserve resources, reduce waste, and move to a circular economy, the target being to improve sustainability and reduce the environmental impact of their products,” said Alicia Crane, global product manager tobacco at Innovia Films. “It is critical that changes made are founded on science-based data.” Like increasingly more companies, Innovia Films deploys the life cycle analysis (LCA) tool to generate “cradle to grave” data, while the company’s customers, using the same tool, assess cradle to grave data at the market destination (cf. fig. 1). “At Innovia, we have been using this tool for many years and have the r&d in-house capability to generate [peer-reviewable] data,” she explained.
Innovia’s BOPP films have been a fixture in the cigarette manufacturing industry for decades and proven to be excellent in terms of functionality and machinability as well as their economy in terms of weight vs. waste ratio and carbon emissions. While conventional BOPP films are recyclable, Innovia’s present research focuses on sustainable product development to move away from products that use fossil raw materials and towards products with either renewable or recycled content. The company’s latest product is the eco-friendly Encore material, which according to Crane was successfully introduced to the tobacco market, and there is both increased interest and demand not just on a product level but also on a corporate level.”
Many tobacco firms, Crane claimed, nowadays request their suppliers to participate in carbon disclosure projects (CDPs) such as “EcoVadis,” providing carbon emission data. “Both product and corporate sustainable performance matters in the tobacco industry, as companies’ ESG performance has started to impact share values,” she said. Innovia Films actively participates in CDPs for many years, with disclosure being made at the corporate level by Innovia Films’ parent company, CCL Industries. For packaging products in the tobacco sector (but also in numerous other industries), it is imperative that they must be fully com-pliant with all relevant regulations and legal requirements. For example, there is legislation in place in some countries that bans certain materials such as oxo-degradables due to the potential generation of micro plastics. “It is very important that raw materials have a proven chain of custody and certification,” Crane insisted.
Eliminating packaging entirely is not an option for obvious reasons. On the other hand, minimizing packaging is a viable measure if it is not compromising product quality and shelf life. “Companies are down-gauging films,“ Crane explained, but she also cautioned that it should not be overdone. In tobacco packaging films or foils are primarily responsible for ensuring a low water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) to promote longer shelf life, as well as tamper resistance and product protection. Another crucial factor is waste reduction in the logistic chain. “With increased scarcity and cost of crops and transportation, reducing waste in the chain is critical,” Crane pointed out. Innovia Films’ BOPP products performed exceptionally well in terms of strong seals, tight shrink pack wrap and high flat sheet barrier, she said.
The overarching goal in sustainable packaging is to move away from a linear system and towards a circular system, of course. Crane cited the example of energy suppliers gradually increasing the percentage of their supply coming from sustainable resources while using existing infrastructure. It’s a model consumers and industry alike readily understand and value, resulting in reduced carbon emissions. Polymer manufacturers such as Innovia thus shift the emphasis from fossil-based re-sources to renewable and recyclable ones. However, Crane emphasized that the move towards eco friendliness also must be supported by society at large, including end consumers. “The truth is that the move to sustainability requires a change of behavior and a re-adjustment of values that must come from all,” Crane said.
Polymer films, foils, and laminates certainly are major components of cigarette (and in a wider sense, tobacco product) packaging. But paper and cardboard products arguably make up a much higher proportion overall. Nobody knows that better than one of the world’s largest paper suppliers to the tobacco sector, Indonesia’s PT. Bukit Muria Jaya, or BMJ for short. Its senior regional sales manager, Eko Setiawan, readily confirmed to Tobacco Asia that BMJ had been approached by several companies – both local and international ones – with inquiries regarding eco-friendly packaging materials. But Setiawan also found it prudent to point out that, “the demand for eco-friendly packaging, specifically from the cigarette industry, generally is not as high as that from the non-cigarette [i.e. non-tobacco] sector.”
Tellingly, BMJ received such inquiries mostly from European companies, though Setiawan understandably was not prepared to divulge concrete names. However, he said that sales volumes of eco-friendly paper products stable over the past years. He attributed that stagnation to diverging approaches and policies towards environmental protection that prevail in various regions and countries. “For instance, the difference in environmental awareness between countries in Europe and in Asia plays a huge role,” Setiawan said. While the European Union (EU) methodically introduces more and more anti-plastics and environmental protection laws and regulations, most Asian countries trail far, far behind. Hence, eco-friendly tobacco product packaging is not as high on the regulatory agenda in the majority of Asia as it is in Europe.
However, just like Innovia’s Crane, Setiawan also hinted that current eco-friendly packaging is not always universally suited for completely replacing conventional packaging materials such as aluminum foil or oil-derived films just yet.
“It will require a lot more research and innovation to effectively support clients with eco-friendly packaging,” he said. Still, BMJ is already doing its part in driving that innovation when producing cigarette packaging materials for its worldwide clients. The company since quite recently offers biodegradable board paper, for example. Its catalogue also encompasses a choice of petrochemical-free paper coatings and inks. In addition, there are eco-friendly substitutes for metallization and hotstamping, using special inks supplied by various European firms. Despite that, Setiawan admitted that regular solvent-based inks are still the order of the day for most tobacco packaging.
But even though requests for eco-friendly options remains relatively subdued at this time, Setiawan projected that this demand is rather sooner than later going to ramp up because “most cigarette companies are already focusing on their ESG initiatives.”