What should I do with the shoes I no longer wear?
21/08/2024
Whether it’s because they no longer fit, have gone bad, or we simply don’t like them as much. When shoes reach the end of life,
Sociedade Ponto Verde’s Pack4Sustain tool lets you know the degree of circularity, the marine risk and the recommended recycling iconography of each package.
The Pack4Sustain is Sociedade Ponto Verde’s (SPV) new digital service that helps create and develop more sustainable and circular packaging through eco-design.
This is a fully online tool where SPV’s packaging clients and partners can assess the characteristics and components of packaging made from various materials (plastic, paper/cardboard, glass, metal, and wood), ensuring that they introduce packaging to the market with the best possible environmental profile.
To do this, clients must answer questionnaires about the packaging, which is evaluated based on circularity criteria (assessing features that determine proper handling in disposal, collection, sorting, and recycling stages), the marine risk index (measuring the potential of specific packaging to fall under the “Single Use Plastics” Directive), and “Safe & Sustainable by Design” (intended to diagnose packaging based on potential impacts on public health and the environment, especially in the marine ecosystem).
As a result, an integrated classification of the packaging is generated on a five-level scale, and recommendations are given on eco-design and the correct recycling iconography to apply to the packaging.
Pack4Sustain, developed in partnership with Centimfe – Technological Center for the Molds, Special Tools and Plastics Industry and the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Nova University of Lisbon, also has other advantages such as the opportunity to find out the best combinations of materials in terms of sorting and recycling and to test the impact of potential changes not only to current packaging, but also to prototypes of new packaging.
“Currently, there are still packages that, due to the nature of the materials in their composition or the presence of contaminants, are difficult or impossible to process after selective collection and, therefore, determine their lack of circularity,” explains SPV in a statement.
“We work together with our clients on a daily basis to help the country meet its environmental targets, particularly in terms of packaging recycling, and Pack4Sustain was born in this context. It’s a working tool, aligned with the legislative evolution of the packaging sector, which joins other innovative solutions that we already offer our clients, emerging as a new contribution to standardizing sustainable practices in the packaging sector,” says Ana Trigo Morais, CEO of SPV.
Through Pack4Sustain, SPV is reinforcing its mission to promote the recycling rate in Portugal and increase the recyclability of packaging, establishing itself as a partner in its customers’ sustainability journey and ensuring “proximity work and education with citizens, since the results obtained through this service will also help consumers make more responsible decisions at the time of purchase and post-consumption,” concludes the CEO.
She might have chosen to study Meteorology and Oceanography, but ultimately pursued Communication. And that's fine because if they don't get their weather predictions right, she wouldn't be the one to change that. She started by looking for sustainable ideas and projects for the university, and since then, she has never stopped (who stops, really?). She loves to watch tv shows, but she watches few because she is demanding. You don't need much to convince her to embrace new, "greener" habits and challenges.
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Sustainable Development Goals 🍃
This article promotes an action that encourages the reduction of waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse.
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