COMPOSTING

 

Composting is a natural biological process by which organic materials (twigs, grass, flowers, fruit, and vegetable remains, etc.), shredded, mixed, and aerated to ensure adequate oxygenation, decompose thanks to the action of microorganisms, earthworms, and insects, turning into soil rich in humus, which can be used to replenish the soil with nutrients and bio elements. 

Composting is therefore useful both to ensure soil fertility and to reduce the amount of waste to be sent to landfills. The advantages increase if we consider that compost is a natural, ecological fertilizer, able to replace at least in part chemical fertilizers and to eliminate or reduce the use of potting soils and substrates of other nature.

Composting can be done by using a compost heap or, if you have enough space and a large amount of organic waste to recycle, by forming a heap.

On the market, there are different types of composters: bell-shaped, truncated cone, a hexagonal section with volume from 300 to 900 liters. There must be cracks in both the bottom and the top to allow air to circulate properly in the material being processed. Alternatively, composting can be done via the heap. For this practice, you must choose a location that is dry and close to a water source to restore moisture during warmer seasons.

Some of BOTTA Packaging's products, in addition to being recyclable and biodegradable, are also compostable. such as:

- Eco-Tape Compostable, sustainable solution to replace PVC or OPP tape in packaging or daily use.

BOTTA Packaging is always at the forefront to guarantee sustainable and green products that protect and respect the environment.

                                     

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FOR SAFE FOOD DELIVERY

 

Food delivery is an industry that has been subjected to strong growth in the past years. Especially in our current time, where traveling is limited, food delivery plays an important role in the restaurant industry. 

There are now new ways to lunch, dine and shop for groceries. With this pandemic, food delivery has increased its popularity, reaching unprecedented numbers. Food delivery consists of having either a ready-made meal delivered or having your groceries brought to your home. You select the products you want to buy on the website and then they are shipped to your home. Food services use different means of delivery such as couriers who use bicycles or scooters or, in the case of shopping, the real vans. 

Food delivery has many advantages: it is convenient, practical, and fast. When you don't feel like cooking, all you have to do is choose what you want to eat and order it. And so happens for shopping: instead of going to the supermarket, especially with the risk of infection and the risk of crowding in supermarkets due to the emergency situation caused by the pandemic, you just choose the products to buy from your home and then place an order.

However, food delivery also leads to issues. With the current pandemic, security in the food delivery sector is increasingly sought after to ensure hygiene and avoid shoplifting of the product to be consumed. 

For this reason, BOTTA Packaging has created the ECO-SAFETY SEAL  a solution to protect products from possible tampering during transport. 

This innovation is recommended for all companies and restaurateurs that offer a delivery service.

The ECO-SAFETY SEAL is equipped with a security hologram and anti-tampering notches that qualify it among the top products of the latest generation to defend the contents of the packaging. In addition, thanks to its composition, the product is Paper Recyclable. The technology and the material used to create a perfect combination of security, innovation, and sustainability. The ECO-SAFETY SEAL is available both in the basic version and in the customizable one, in order to offer unique and safe packaging, putting side by side the logo of your company into a sustainable product.

 

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NO-PLASTIC CAMPAIGN: COCA COLA LAUCHES THE NEW PAPER BOTTLE

NO-PLASTIC CAMPAIGN: COCA COLA LAUNCHES THE NEW PAPER BOTTLE

The story about Coca-Cola is famous all around the world. Its bottle is a real icon, the most world-famous bottle, recognizable even with closed eyes and distinguishable from any other competitor.

But today that iconic bottle is ready for a change, for a revolution.

The new bottle created by Coca-Cola is still in the planning phase and it will be probably released next summer. The news came out on February 11TH, 2021: the company has started a revolution, an innovative project to reduce over 3 million tons of plastic used in its products' packaging (not only coca-cola itself but also Fanta, Adez, fuze tea, and sprite).

The company is one of the biggest leading plastic polluters. It is estimated that every year, it uses over 100 billion plastic. But today, this must change. Finding a green solution that could replace plastic, is today the big challenge among numerous brands. Due to the need of developing a sustainable strategy for the planet, demanded by a new responsible consumer, Coca-cola has signed an agreement with Pabocco (Paper bottle company), a danish start-up specialized in recyclable paper bottles. The purpose is to put on the market the very first bottle made of paper, fully recyclable in the paper stream, and sustainable. The experiment will start next summer, testing one of the drinks owned by the company: Adez, hoping that later it will be used for the whole line. This experimentation will take place in Hungary, where a group of 2 thousand consumers will be called to test the drink.

In 2018 coca-cola announced an ambitious project, willing to put an end to waste by 2025, introducing on market fully recyclable packaging. It’s been three years that the company has been working on sustainable ideas, which led to the partnership with Pabocco.

The idea is to create a 100% recyclable bottle, coming from sustainable sources, suitable to contain beverages, made of paper with only the cap and a thin plastic recyclable coating.

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THE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT

 

The Life Cycle Assessment is a tool used to assess the potential environmental impact of a product or process. It allows to compare different products with the same function and to identify the most relevant impacts on which to focus reduction efforts. It considers the entire life cycle, performing an unbiased and comprehensive assessment that includes the steps of 1) extraction, 2) raw material processing, 3) production, 4) distribution, 5) use and 6) final disposal. 

The Life Cycle Assessment is based on five phases. The first step is to define the objectives of the study. One asks what purpose the study is being done for and what subjects the study is aimed at. 

In the second phase, you define the scope of the study; that means you define the functional unit and the boundaries of the system. The functional unit is the unit of measure to which all results of the Life Cycle Assessment are referenced. The boundaries of the system define which parts of the product life cycle and which processes associated with them are included in the system analyzed.

The third step is to compile the life cycle inventory. Input and output data are collected for the processes that contribute to the production of the product or service within the defined boundaries. This is the most important phase of the Life Cycle Assessment study, in which an analog model of reality is built to represent as faithfully as possible the exchanges between individual operations in each phase of the life cycle. 

In the fourth phase, the environmental footprint is calculated, i.e. the environmental performance of the product or service is assessed through the classification and characterization of inventory data.

Finally, the fifth step is to interpret and communicate the environmental footprint. Science-based conclusions and recommendations are drawn from the analysis to support environmental improvements. Finally, the results are interpreted to assess the sustainability of circular economy solutions.

Through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the environmental footprint of a product or service is assessed throughout its life cycle.

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SAVE THE TREES

 

Forests, woods, and trees around us are not doing well. And if trees aren't doing well, humans consequently do worse. Trees and plants play a fundamental role in cleaning the air, providing us with oxygen and food while also fighting soil erosion and retaining pollutants. 

Trees make up 80% of the food we eat and produce 98% of the oxygen we breathe. That's why the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) launched 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health: Plant health is our health. And planting trees will become the buzzword. 

There are many possible solutions we can all adopt to save trees. First of all, each of us should plant a tree. A single tree per person would be enough to make a big difference. In situations where this not possible, there are environmental protection organizations that give the possibility on their website to buy or donate a tree. Another possible solution to preserve green areas on Earth is eating less meat. The higher the demand for meat, the more you need to cultivate to feed animals and grow their food. 

But the best and most efficient solution of all is to use the right amount of raw materials, especially paper. We should all try to minimize the use of paper, starting from the small daily actions. For example, there's always that one photocopy we print per day that we could not have printed. 

With this in mind, BOTTA Packaging is committed to the challenge of saving trees. BOTTA Packaging makes its packaging from corrugated cardboard. This is a circular choice aimed at saving trees. In fact, corrugated cardboard is 100% recyclable, biodegradable, and produced from renewable sources. It lends itself to being recycled and reused in different ways. Recycled fibers often make up 88% of the raw material with which new packaging will be made.

In its own way, BOTTA Packaging tries to do its part every day, thanks to its commitment and eco-products range. 

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PACKAGING MATTERS IN THE RETAIL WORLD

Respect and protection of the environment are two fundamental elements, especially at a time when our planet is suffering all the consequences of centuries of exploitation of its resources and lack of attention to its needs. 

Consumers, who are increasingly attentive to the purchase of products that respect ecology, prefer to buy products from companies that use eco-sustainable packaging. The retail world is in fact influenced by three factors: if the products arrive in undamaged packaging if the packaging has been customized, and finally if the packaging is eco-friendly. 

This last attention has focused on the logistics sector, i.e., the packaging used to contain and ship any kind of goods.

The importance of eco-sustainable packaging comes from the respect that the retail world has for nature. 

There are many companies that, every month, produce tons of waste goods and garbage that are difficult to recycle. This fact must be limited, especially if you care about the fate of our planet. In this sense, eco-friendly packaging and ecological packaging are the keys to give a demonstration of civility and respect towards the planet that hosts us, and that allows us to live. 

But that's not all. Companies, in order to increase turnover, should rely on eco-friendly packaging, since the retail world is very attentive to this issue. Using non-recyclable packaging could mean that the consumer does not buy a product, and this, on an economic level, translates into a loss for the company.

BOTTA Packaging is the perfect combination of having safe and reliable, eco-friendly, and customizable products. BOTTA Packaging offers companies a wide range of eco-sustainable packaging solutions, produced from renewable sources, circular and recyclable. 

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SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY

 

Sustainability is a highly topical issue today, as confirmed by the growing interest in the green fashion movement, which promotes environmentally and consumer-friendly production. 

One issue that has long been held in high regard by all manufacturing companies, especially brands, is that of sustainable chemistry.

Sustainable chemistry is an issue that cuts across all supply chains, but particularly in the textile industry where attention is still very high because there is a real possibility of finding substances in products that are dangerous to human health and the environment. 

There are many substances that need to be eliminated or replaced, and globalization has shifted important textile production quotas to non-EU countries that do not respect safety, environmental protection, and social equity rules. The production of basic chemical components is almost completely delocalized to the Far East and is therefore difficult to control and direct. In Europe, however, the control and elimination of the most dangerous chemical compounds from the market have given excellent results over the last ten years, with many companies responding to the demand to reduce their environmental footprint by analyzing garments, adopting chemical management systems, and drawing up sustainability reports.

Chemical sustainability is linked to the quality of the substances used, so the role of research and innovation is crucial in order to identify new substances that can replace the more dangerous ones. There is therefore a strong economic case for doing better.

The assessment of these factors, however, is very much linked to the geographical area of the world or the country in which the company operates. The directions are taken by Europe towards the abandonment of polluting industrial processes and the invention of new production processes with fewer emissions have not been motivated by obligations and constraints but rather by an environmental awareness guided by existing legislation.

There is a need to push for the dissemination of directives concerning the health of workers and the environment in different countries to ensure greater sustainability. In-depth knowledge of the processing stages of production chains can lead to planning, testing, and practical implementation of a greener approach to production in the world of fashion. 

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SUSTAINABLE DRINKING? YES, WITH REUSABLE STRAWS

 

The problem of plastics is an issue that is being increasingly discussed. Plastics make up 85% of marine waste and in the form of microplastics they also pollute the air and water and end up in the food we eat every day. We must try to use as little plastic as possible and above all avoid using non-recyclable items.

The topic of reusable straws is becoming increasingly popular: every day we have to dispose of large quantities of straws. The problem with straws is that they are thrown away after only five minutes of use. Also, straws are used a lot for all kinds of drinks. 

Reusable straws are a very interesting choice to replace a product that is offered every day at every meal or drink purchase. There are different types of reusable straws: the best ones are made of bamboo, steel, and silicone.

 

The most commonly proposed alternative when trying to avoid single-use plastic is bamboo, a type of 100% biodegradable wood that leaves no footprint and is not treated with dyes or chemicals during production. Bamboo is lightweight but very durable, suitable for the consumption of hot and cold drinks, beautiful to look at, and often produced in a fair trade way. This material has natural antibacterial properties: once the straw has been washed with a special brush and warm water, it will be perfectly hygienic.

 

Another material used for reusable straws is stainless steel. The life of this product is practically infinite, being made of a material that is resistant to impact, heat, and rubbing. You can wash steel straws in a dishwasher or even by boiling them. Stainless steel is a very safe material, which is odorless, does not rust, and does not affect the taste of cold or hot drinks. 

 

Finally, there are silicone straws: a perfect product for travelers. Silicone straws are lightweight, crumple up into very small spaces, and can be washed in boiling water. In addition, there is food-grade silicone, 100% safe and non-toxic, BPA-free. The straws have no smell and do not alter the taste of drinks. They are packaged in a separate capsule so they can be conveniently carried in your bag every day.

These reusable straws are great items to avoid the use of plastic and have a beautiful and environmentally friendly product.

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