AFRY helps the Flying Tiger Copenhagen develop sustainable packaging solutions

260 million tones. That’s the total amount of produced plastics in the world each year. Unfortunately, out of this only about twelve percent is recycled. Overall, the choice of material in all product development processes plays a vital role for sustainable development.

The Flying Tiger Copenhagen is a Danish variety store chain with more than 900 stores globally. With an ambition to improve sustainability in their packaging of a product line, they consulted AFRY for help with the new design.

However, to choose the ultimate material for packaging is far from easy. There are many aspects that needs to be taken into consideration for each case. Christian Håkansson, Sr Packaging Development Consultant at AFRY, explains:

– For example, a material that protects the product better may be more difficult to recycle. It can be hard to choose between a material providing a longer product lifetime but with incineration (energy recovery) as a result or one with a shorter product lifetime but with possible material recycling. There is not a universal solution, so every situation must be evaluated individually.

The team at AFRY looked at different options of material and design concepts, and based on the client’s preferences, they eventually developed the full-scale design solution. In this case cardboard was chosen as the packaging material.

– Replacing plastics with cardboard enables us to recycle the material more easily and, at the same time, only use raw material from renewable sources, says Christian Håkansson , and continues:

– Sustainable packaging is complex. More innovations, creative design and in depth knowledge of your value chain will be keys to drive the progress of sustainable development in the packaging industry in the future.