Watching our waste

The number one purpose of packaging is to protect the product.

Throughout the supply chain – from design and manufacture through to filling and shipping – this is the golden rule. And in the pharmaceutical sector, the stakes are high.

“The demands are more critical than FMCG,” explains packaging consultant Neil Farmer. “Given the nature of the product, there is a greater need for security and safety. But I believe there’s a lot of room for innovation in this area and there are brilliant new ideas in pharma.”

Packaging technologists and designers are being driven to maintain product protection with another pressing need – sustainability. In this market, plastic is fantastic.

But lawmakers think differently and have set targets to reduce plastic packaging over the next few years.

In Europe, for example, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation – likely to come into force next year – is pushing brands with recycling and reusable packaging targets.

Pharma isn’t immune to the drive to reduce packaging’s impact on the environment. Plastic has been – and continues to be – the go-to material. So, how can the market respond to these demands?

According to Future Market Insights, the global pharmaceutical packaging market is currently worth $108.9bn and is set to rise to $216.2bn by 2034. The figures – and projected growth – shouldn’t be a surprise, according to Farmer.

“Pharma packaging has better margins compared to FMCG,” he adds. “There is more money available from pharmaceutical companies to invest and they need to. Right now, sustainability is high on the agenda across all levels of packaging – primary (such as blister packs), secondary (for example cartons) and tertiary (outer boxes for shipment).”

Nadine Khoury, senior strategic marketing manager at Berry Global Healthcare – a specialist in plastic pack design and manufacture, adds: “Plastic has a lot to offer the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors – protection, sterility, hygiene, safety, convenience, ease of use, ease of transportation and flexibility in design.

“The circular economy continues to drive design and development work throughout the plastics industry, aligning it with two key rules of the circular economy – design out waste and pollution, and keep products and materials in use. This is not a new approach. Sustainable design has been a critical consideration for plastic manufacturers for a long time.”

Nadine explains that weight reduction is one innovation that designs out waste; this isn’t just on formats like bottles but also the weight of closures, such as caps.
 Innovations in medicine dosing have also aided the pharmaceutical industry’s impact on the environment.

“Active pharmaceutical ingredients from human medicines can either enter the environment through human excretions if products have been inaccurately dosed, or from unused medicines being thrown down the toilet or sink,” she says.

“This is where effective design of a pump or dosing system is critical, both ensuring that the exact required amount is dispensed each time and making the process of administering the dose easy and comfortable for the patient.”

The wider environmental impact is also the focus at Haleon, which is behind household brands including Aquafresh, Centrum, Otrivine and Panadol.

According to Joe Muscat, Haleon’s sustainability director responsible for sustainable packaging, “sustainability is hard-wired into our purpose. We want healthy people and a healthy planet.

“My focus is designing our packaging to be recyclable and reducing our use of virgin petroleum-based plastic. We also work with waste management companies and local authorities. We want our packaging collected, sorted and recycled to drive circularity”.

Reducing virgin plastic is tricky. But Muscat notes that technology in recycled plastics has come on leaps and bounds since many regulations and standards were drafted.

Now, the quota of mechanically recycled plastic (plastic waste processed into secondary raw material that doesn’t significantly change the material’s chemical structure) has increased.

Meanwhile, more chemically recycled resins are coming onto market – a technology that changes the plastic’s chemical structure and offers greater scalability. Bioplastics are maturing and are no longer just sourced from foodstock but also waste biomass.

Those developments might aid one problem format in the future – although it seems some way off now. Gareth Lewis is managing director at Pharma Pac, a Wirral-based firm with services including filling and packing. He flags up concerns around blister packs.

“We work with brand owners to trial their products in blister pack materials that are recyclable. The objective being to swap out of traditional PVC-based products, which are sealed to an aluminium foil.

“As always there is a balance between material cost, machine performance, stability of the product in the new material and regulatory updates to licences. Working in partnership with machine and tooling suppliers there is a desire to solve this problem but unfortunately it is taking some time.”

Haleon’s Muscat agrees that there are challenges. “PVC has excellent barrier properties but it’s the number one plastic you don’t want in the recycling stream – it has a negative impact on PET plastic (used in plastic beverage bottles). So how you switch from composites is challenging.

“Can you find an alternative material that’s widely recycled? Will it run down the line and will it pass the barrier property requirements. Will it pass the regulatory submissions? It also adds cost.”

But toothpaste bottles could provide a glimpse of the future. Haleon has managed to convert the composite material used in this format – aluminium HDPE laminate – into a mono material HDPE, improving recyclability.

Muscat adds that this has been done without sacrificing quality, safety or performance of the product. And it’s part of a strategy to find out what works in markets that have fewer regulatory hoops and see if it can be applied to areas that have increased scrutiny.

Berry’s Khoury adds that increasing the amount of plastic recycled increases the availability of the recycled material to produce new packs.

However, “the challenge for pharmaceutical products, has always been the high quality of material needed for hygienic and safety-critical applications, which some recycled content could not always guarantee.

“This is an area where the industry has focused a lot of technical development. A key starting point was the recognition that the sourcing of sustainable materials and traceability need to go hand in hand. This has seen the adoption of the mass balance approach or attribution, an accepted and certified protocol that documents and tracks recycled content from supplier through to final delivery to customers.”

Sustainability is an ongoing journey in pharmaceutical packaging – one that requires investment and care.

Haleon’s Muscat describes the current outlook as ‘lumpy’. There are many interesting developments being worked on, but it’s tough. Because of pharma’s very specific set of requirements, expect packaging innovations to take time to come on stream – but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Philip Chadwick is the former editor of Packaging News