Japanese packaging concern Gunze has debuted what's described as a an eco-friendly lightweight shrink film for automatic sleeve applicators whose main sustainable attribute besides being a wafer-thin 23 microns in gage appears to be that it "contains 5% of chemical recycled raw materials with the mass balance approach." That's not very much. But what concerns us is that the GEOPLAS HCX1 film combines polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in a multi-layer structure; hardly a candidate for efficient mechanical recycling.
Around the same time in 2022, its GEOPLAS HCT3 heat-shrinkable film with the same structure but containing 30% chemical recycled raw materials. Yes the film was thicker, at 35 microns, but the latest GEOPLAS HCX1 film seems to be a step backwards.
Nevertheless, we do laud Gunze's longer-term target stating "50% of the raw materials used by the plastics business would be based on recycled and biomass raw materialsd by 2027 and 100% by 2030.
Image courtesy of Gunze