The use of plastic products is deeply ingrained in everyone’s daily lives, from shopping bags and cutlery to water bottles and sandwich wrapping. The quest for convenience has gone too far and we fail to use plastic products efficiently, waste valuable resources, and damage the environment.
Overconsumption of these products and mismanagement of plastic waste is a growing threat, causing landfills to overflow, clogging river flows, and endangering marine ecosystems. This has a negative impact on sectors that are crucial to many economies, such as tourism, transport, and fisheries.
Conscious consumers are pushing companies to move away from single-use plastics because they want sustainable and recyclable packaging. Studies, such as one by NACS - the Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing - have found that during the pandemic, two-thirds of shoppers began paying more attention to the packaging they purchased.
Paptic® Provides the Solution to Excess Plastic
Paptic®is a growing Finnish company that develops, produces, markets, and sells new and unique Paptic® materials, where the main raw material is sustainably sourced wood fiber. State-of-the-art, renewable, reusable, and recyclable flexible packaging materials that enable the substitution of less environmentally friendly materials with little effort. Its materials include Paptic Apus®, Paptic Sterna®, and Paptic Tringa®.
The company was founded in 2015 to address one of the biggest global environmental challenges, plastic waste accumulating in the oceans. Petroleum-derived plastic is not the choice for sustainable brands in the future. Through Paptic®'s material innovation, significant amounts of plastic can be replaced in numerous flexible packaging applications, such as carrier bags, e-commerce envelopes, garment bags, and other packaging products in areas such as fashion, dry food, and hygiene products.
It’s heat sealable, so it can be used in a variety of packaging applications. It can stretch up to 20% and is stronger than plastic films. This means it does not lose its shape easily. Like plastic bags, the Paptic® bag can be folded down to a small volume and stored ready for its next use.
Paptic®'s versatility, coupled with its recyclable properties, make the material a powerful tool for environmentally conscious brands. Examples of brands that have vowed to reduce their plastic use are Zara, Stella McCartney, and Gucci
Finland’s Ambitious Sustainability Goals
Finland is recognized not only for its state-of-the-art education system but also for having the highest percentage of forest cover of any country in Europe. This is because about 75% of its territory is covered by forests. Its wood-based industries have combined forestry traditions with innovative new uses for wood and pulp products. The latter is a wood-derived material mostly used for paper manufacturing.
Finland has set environmental and carbon neutrality targets, and has removed, through various means, as much CO2 as it emits into the atmosphere. It is also the first welfare society to aim to be free of fossil fuels, such as coal, gas, and oil, by 2035.