El V Congress of Packaging and Circular Economy organized by the Cluster of Innovation in Container and Packaging has hosted more than 150 professionals in Valencia in a meeting that has resolved all doubts regarding regulations and legislation, and in which experiences in the use of new technologies have been presented to boost this new green economy.
A conference that has brought together the different agents of the packaging value chain and that has been financed by the Department of Sustainable Economy, Productive Sectors, Commerce and Labor of the Generalitat Valenciana. Cabka, Encaja, Innotech COEXPAN & EMSUR, AIMPLAS, Grabalfa and Ecoembes have also collaborated in this meeting.
Amaya Fernandez, President of Container and Packaging Cluster, has inaugurated the event and has highlighted the sector's continuous commitment to innovation for years to adapt to all regulations on the circular economy, as well as the need to continue having financing to face all these challenges. Along these lines, the general director of Industry of the Generalitat Valenciana, Manuel Rosalen, also highlighted in the opening the commitment of the regional government to maintain the line of aid to SMEs to continue making the sector and the economy strong.
Meanwhile, in the opening presentation, Jose Maria Fernandez, director of Circular Economy at the Public Society for Environmental Management of the Basque Government – IHOBE, has detailed the new challenges of ecological marketing in Europe. On the one hand, he explained that 80% of citizens buy environmentally friendly products, which has become an important factor when putting products on the market. All of this has been transferred to the different eco-labelling systems, of which there are 450 different ones and are present in 199 countries and 25 industrial sectors.
And at this point, the practice of Greenwashing, a concept that is not regulated, and which refers to exaggerated or misleading information about the environmental considerations of a product, in order to give a good image. In this sense, it has offered a series of guidelines to detect it, such as checking whether the labels are invented designs, that they offer information without evidence or that they use eco-labels that lack verification systems. And he has also spoken of the danger of the opposite concept, the Green hushing, that is, the lack of information or transparency of a product about its environmental information.
roundtables
This congress is characterized by the possibility for attendees to directly ask their concerns to a panel of experts in the field. Specifically, the first debate table, moderated by María Rodríguez, director of sustainability at Lantero Group, has addressed the technical and legislative environment. Eva Rodríguez, a technician from the Industry, Energy and Environment area at CEOE; Begoña Pastor, strategic partnerships and regulatory framework manager at Angela Impact Economy and José Segarra, partner in Garrigues. They have highlighted that any environmental claim must have scientific evidence and have gone through a verification filter. At this point, they have talked about Planet Score, a product rating system in environmental matters that has already been implemented in France and which is already being pilot tested in Spain.
Regarding European regulations on circular economy, the experts at the table have highlighted that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the draft of the European Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste, and that it is a very extensive and complex regulation. At this point, they have pointed out that the most important thing is to be aware of the regulations that are already in force in Spain and their consequences.
Meanwhile, the recyclability of packaging is a highlighted point in the regulations and in the future of the sector, which is why the congress has also focused on offering the latest technologies and experiences in recycling and post-consumer. Along these lines, Javier García, Managing Director Cabka Spain & VP Material Development atcabka; Óscar Hernández, general director at Anarpla and Gloria Lázaro, general director at Repacar, guided by Germán Casado, responsible for the Drinks Companies & Non-Food sectors in Ecoembes, have highlighted that the objective is to be able to have quality recycled raw material, collaborating between all the agents in the supply chain, scraps, etc. Along these lines, they have also explained that for the circular economy to truly work, it has to be economically sustainable. On the other hand, they have explained that anticipating regulations on recycled material is a way to stay ahead, and that little by little the trend of reusing containers and packaging will be increasingly introduced.
In the third discussion table, the technologies that are energizing the circular economy were explained. Concha Bosch, responsible for packaging projects for AINIA; Lorena Rodríguez, packaging group leader in AIMPLAS; Beatriz Ferreira, innovation product manager South Europe atDS SMITH; Miriam Gallur, manager of the technological area of new materials and packaging at ITENE; and Antonio Riaño, manager at INNOTECH. It has been moderated by Carlos Giner, KAM in Grabalfa, and it has presented works carried out, for example, with technologies to create monomaterials on demand with high performance; the use of 3D technologies to reduce material costs for mold testing so that containers can be tested by consumers; and new laminated cartons to improve stacking and logistics. The focus has also been placed on using materials that lead to better recyclability, taking into account that packaging always has to first preserve the product it contains, as well as on the use of mechanical and chemical recycling technologies.
The last table of the congress was moderated by Patricia García, head of communication and marketing at FITS, and has brought together experts such as Manuel Esteban, packaging and POS activation manager in CEPSA; Alejandra Navarro, sustainability packaging manager at RECKITT; and Miguel Lázaro, responsible for the Packaging area of ANECOOP. Among others, they have highlighted the projects they work on and their advances in sustainability in terms of packaging.
Lastly, Jesús Pérez, director of the Packaging Cluster, ended the session by thanking the attendees and detailing the organization's commitment to continue promoting circular economy projects.
