These have been on the market for many years as sustainable packaging options. Cardboard wrap ensures the cup’s stability, allowing for exceptionally thin walls and saving plastic. The plastic cup is also unprinted, making it an excellent recycling item.
New, intuitive tear-off mechanism
To fully exploit the sustainability potential of cardboard-plastic cups, consumers need to separate the cardboard wrap from the plastic cup and dispose of the two components separately. This was already easy to do in the past, but to make the disposal process even easier, Greiner Packaging has worked with the Schwarzach offset printing company to further optimize K3® cups’ tear-off mechanism. The new, patented solution is not only eye-catching, but also boasts particularly intuitive handling. Separation can now be carried out with a single hand movement without a moment’s thought. After the separation process, consumers only have two packaging components in their hands: the cardboard wrap and the cup. Both can be easily added to their respective recycling streams in paper or plastic waste.
“A cardboard-plastic combination is particularly environmentally friendly compared to other packaging solutions. However, it is important that the two components be separated and disposed of correctly. We have therefore worked intensively on a new tear-off mechanism that makes the separation option even more intuitive and, above all, impossible to overlook.“: Jens Krause, Product Group Manager K3® at Greiner Packaging.
The positive feedback
Introducing the new tear-off mechanism has generated a lot of interest on the market, with many customers already switching to the new solution and confirming its positive features. These include Jérôme Mathyer, Head of Packaging Development at ELSA-MIFROMA, part of Migros-Industrie: “It was important for us to fully exploit the K3® cups’ recycling potential – with the new tear-off mechanism, we are making it even easier for consumers to separate cardboard from the unprinted cup, thus enabling clean recycling.”
Simple handling – simple changeover
Changeover to the new tear-off solution is just as easy as the actual handling: the majority of the changes are made internally at Greiner Packaging. Customers may need to make minor adjustments to the cardboard wrap design as part of the changeover process. These adjustments pay off twofold: They are entirely in the interests of both consumers and the environment.
