- Global Hygiene Trends
- The Holistic Approach to Personal Care
- Organic Cotton
- Sustainable Procurement in the NHS
- Sustainable Procurement of Forest Products
- Time for Green Thinking
- Innovation in Sustainability
- Recycling Hygiene Products
- Disposing of Hygiene Products
- Measuring Biodegradability
- A new Biodegradable Superabsorbent
- Enhancing Sustainable Performance
- Wound-care developments
Key Points
• Disposal of used diapers in landfill is
likely to be banned as moves to exclude biodegradable materials from European
landfills take effect over the next few years.
• Disposal of used diapers in
the biodegradable waste stream is unlikely to be allowed due to their high
content of non-biodegradable materials.
• Incineration of use diapers is
unacceptable due to high energy input needed.
• The Knowaste used-diaper
recycling process appears to be gaining ground in Europe . The main payback is
now from recycling PP into roof tiles and pulp/faeces into biogas.
• Used
diaper collection logistics remain the key problem. A diaper tax could be the
answer. Calls for the “producer pays” principal to be applied to diaper disposal
appear to be getting more strident.
• Organic food's success over the last
10 years could be a model for the future of currently high-price, niche
“organic” sustainable disposables.
• Purchasers of organic food will also
try premium-priced sustainable hygiene products if they are available in the
same store.
• Organic cotton tampons are said to improve the well-being of
users. Natracare, the manufacturer, now selling in 45 countries, will not use
US-grown organic cotton because farming and certification standards are too
low.
• Consumers appreciate the carbon-footprint labelling which is emerging
on biodegradable hygiene products. Water-footprinting could be the next
differentiation.
• Dow and Crystalsev are collaborating on the production of
350,000 tonnes/year of polyethylene from sugar cane.
• A biodegradable
superabsorbent based on styrene maleic anhydride polymer in a biocomposite with
gelatin is said to cost less than PAA and have similar properties. It can also
be spun into fine soft fibres.
• The rapidly growing single person
households are proving to be trend-setters in the use of convenience products in
general and disposable cleaning products in particular.
• Within Europe,
Spain and Russia will show the highest growth rates due to their higher birth
rates in the period to 2020.
• Western Europe will be stagnant, but Eastern
Europe including Russia will grow at 10% per annum. Russia will be the largest
hygiene product market (>$3bn) by 2011.
• Use of disposable hygiene
products declined in France during the last year.
• A backlash against
“green” marketing could be occurring as consumers begin to doubt the validity of
the claims now made by most suppliers, and suspect they are cashing-in on
environmental concern.
• There is a growing unease about disposables and
their environmental impact, coupled with concerns about their effects on baby's
skin.
• Niche brands with good eco-credibility (e.g. Natracare, g-Diapers)
could benefit.
• Washable diapers are leading the “green” diaper market, but
the flushable g-Diapers product is doing well despite limited availability and
premium pricing for the inserts.
• Sanpro as a whole is declining in WE, but
sanpro with organic cotton is growing. Tampax with flushable applicator was
described here as a new development and an example of big-brand commitment to
sustainability.
• Boundaries between sanpro and inco were being blurred by
products such as Nana+.
• Wipes with natural ingredients are moving ahead;
flushable, biodegradable claims based on new materials being seen more often.
However these have made little impact in the market.
• Peer-to-peer
marketing based on My Space and Facebook web-site popularity is gaining.
P&G's Tremor Unit in the USA was mentioned, but would a similar approach
work in Europe ? Europeans thought EU youth would reject such attempts at
“infiltration” of their sites.
• Organic food's success over the last 10
years could be the model for sustainable hygiene products over the next
10.
• The main motivation for buying organic products is not concern for the
environment but a belief that personal health will benefit. (This applies to
tampons and wipes as well as food.)
• For “green” claims to succeed in
future, the whole production route (cradle-grave) must be visibly green,
including energy sources.
The Holistic Approach to Personal Care
Andrew Jenkins, Sustainable Development Manager,
Boots Group PLC (UK) , reminded us of the unique nature of Boots'
product development process. This large UK-based retailer with 1400 stores,
66,000 employees, 30,000 product lines and £4.3bn sales last year, develops
~1300 new products per annum and has identified sustainability as the route to
future growth and differentiation. Unusually for a retailer they are also the
manufacturer of their key products and therefore control a vertical process from
raw materials to the consumer. Sustainability is built-in to their product
development processes and so their supply chain must now:
• Avoid harsh detergents or problem
chemicals
• Use resources ever more efficiently.
• Insist on ethical
standards at all stages
• Demand efficient logistics
• Choose materials
and design end products to optimise re-use and recycling.
As a
case-study, Mr Jenkins described their development of Sweet Gale for use as an
antiperspirant/deodorant, insect repellent, and skin protector. The plant, grown
in North West Scotland is harvested by clipping the top 10 cm of the bushes to
encourage bushy growth and provide extra cover for wild life. The distillate is
prepared in a mobile cooker towed behind a Land-Rover to reduce transport of
bulky, wet material. The waste is returned to the soil at the harvesting site as
compost. The whole process is encouraging agriculture in this economically poor
region. Sweet Gale is now incorporated in their “now-biodegradable” wet-wipes
based on 85% viscose and 15% cotton.
Commencing July 2007, Boots have started printing the
results of their collaboration with the Carbon Trust, ie. Carbon footprint data,
on their Botanics shampoo packs. The packs now claim a 20% reduction in CO 2
emissions (to 148 gms of CO 2 per bottle) and suggest the user can help further
by washing their hair in cooler water. The 20% CO 2 saving was achieved by using
30% post consumer waste in bottle manufacture and redesigning the logistics to
deliver to store in returnable plastic boxes rather than disposable cardboard.
A survey of their customers has shown that 65% like the
carbon-footprint labelling and they would encourage them to buy other Boots
products similarly labelled. As Mr Jenkins observed, consumers want to make
small positive changes to help the planet and carbon-footprint labelling enables
them to make choices to feed this desire.
Organic Cotton
Kathleen Woods, Director of Program Integration
at the Organic Exchange (USA) opened with the statement that textile
production in general and cotton production in particular was far from
sustainable, but the large and powerful US cotton lobby was proving adept at
bolstering cotton's image in the mind of the consumer. The Organic Exchange was
a small non-profit charity dedicated to expanding organic agriculture. It was
clearly concerned that the notoriously pesticide and fertiliser-hungry US cotton
production was selling its cottonseed oil directly into popular US snacks and
indirectly into US milk via the feed given to US dairy cattle. The cotton fibre
was however the focus of this presentation:
• It required 10% of world pesticide
production including 25% of all insecticides.
• 50% of all pesticides used
in the developing world were used to grow cotton.
• 7 of the most common
pesticides used on cotton were known, probable or likely to be human carcinogens
according to the EPA.
• 0.15kgs of pesticide are needed to produce one
cotton shirt.
Organic cotton by contrast:
• Uses fungicide-free, non-GMO seed.
•
Builds strong soil through crop-rotation (no fertilisers)
• Weeds are
removed mechanically (no herbicides)
• Uses insect predators and/or trap
crops to control unwanted insects.
• Defoliates naturally due to seasonal
freeze or through water management.
Global organic cotton production increased 53% (2005/6
to 2006/7) to 58,000 tonnes and could reach 90,000 in 2007/8. Half of the crop
now feeds products for 5 retailers (WalMart, Nike, Woolworth SA, Coop CH and
C&A) and this is mainly used in knitted apparel. Surprisingly in view of
their intimate usage, only 2-3% of the crop goes into personal care products,
and this tends to be comber waste from yarn production.
Future consumer-motivating issues could involve water
footprint, carbon-neutral clothing, and “clothing miles”, all of which would
favour organic cotton.
Sustainable Procurement in the NHS
David Wathey, the Sustainable Development
Manager at the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (UK) said his
department spends £30bn a year on goods and services, this being a fifth of the
total UK government expenditure. Since March this year they have been
implementing the UK government's sustainable procurement action plan which
included the statement that procurement for health in the UK should not endanger
health elsewhere. The key challenges were listed as:
• Avoiding healthcare acquired infections
(HAI's)
• Increasing usage efficiency
• Segregation of waste for
recycling, and minimising packaging.
• Revisiting single-use versus reusable
products, in order to reintroduce reusables selectively.
• Ensuring wood
products came from “legal” timber.
• Abiding by the International Labour
Organisation conventions on human rights.
As is often the case with this government-controlled
leviathan employing 1.3 million people in the UK , the words were warm and the
substance undetectable.
Sustainable Procurement of Forest Products
Celeste Kuta, the External Relations Manager –
Family Care, P&G (USA) stood in for James Griffiths, MD of the
Sustainable Forest Products Industry Ecosystems Focus Area (SFPIEFA) of the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBBCSD – Switzerland ) who
had decided that the Bali conference was more important. She introduced the 10
key issues recommended in the WBSCD report. These were designed to help
industry's customers understand the sustainability issues and to help expand the
market for sustainable timber.
• Where did the timber originate?
• Is this
information credible?
• Has the timber been produced legally?
• Were the
forests sustainably managed?
• Were sensitive ecosystems protected?
•
Were climate change issues addressed?
• Were appropriate environmental
controls applied?
• Has recycled fibre been used appropriately?
• Have
other resources been used appropriately?
• Have the needs of indigenous
people in the forests been addressed?
It will be issued in Jan 2008. Their next deliberations,
on carbon-footprinting and methane from landfills, will follow soon.
Sustainable Production
Gert Classen, Global Development Leader
(Nonwovens and Fibres) for Dow Europe GmbH gave an overlong
introduction to the company and its mission statements related to
sustainability. However, in contrast to the previous 2 speakers action was
evident.
Dow and Crystalsev are forming a JV to design and build
in Brazil the first integrated world-scale facility to produce polyethylene from
sugar cane. The 350,000 tonne plant will start up in 2011 and will have a
significantly lower carbon footprint than their current Dowlex™ range whilst
being otherwise identical in use and recycling. Crystalsev would convert the
cane to ethanol and Dow would convert this to ethylene and polymerise it. A
slide apparently unrelated to the rest showed the results of a recent
Athena/Franklin life cycle study of PLA versus traditional polymers in
disposable cups. The production of 10,000 traditional PP cups consumed 9.8 GJ
energy and emitted 345 kgs of CO 2 equivalent while producing 84 kgs of post
consumer waste. The comparable figures for PLA cups were 14.5 GJ energy, 510 kgs
CO 2 and 118 kgs of solid waste, which was interesting coming from the company
claiming to have developed the PLA route.
Asked if PP could be made from sugar, Mr Claasen thought
it could, but would not be economic. A self-confessed ecowarrior asked
aggressive questions about pollution from Dow's Canadian plastics plant for
effect rather than information.
Time for Green Thinking
Susie Hewson, Founder and International Sales
and Marketing Director of Natracare (UK) described her early
involvement with the Women's Environmental Network where she championed
educating the consumer about dioxin in pulp and hence in tampons because tampons
were really made of rayon and not cotton.
Her company was founded on strictly ethical and
environmental principles and avoids the use of non-renewables and non-organic
cotton. Natracare tampons and pads are made under contract and certified organic
from their origins in the organic cotton fields of Turkey and Israel through the
production process, which is audited to ensure no possible contamination with
non-organic material. She will not use US produced organic cotton because in her
view the US certification process is not independent and the USDA is bending
over backwards to include farmers whose practices would not pass the EU
standards. (e.g. the US allows insufficient space between ordinary and organic
fields.)
ISO 14025 (Environmental Product Declarations) has been
applied for, and Natracare is already publishing carbon-footprint data on the
packs. (Natracare pads have an 18gm/pad CO 2 equivalent.). She used to use TCF
rayon as well as organic cotton but the viscose producers withdrew it arguing
that ECF was satisfactory. Susie disagreed and switched to organic cotton. She
claims users of her organic tampons actually feel better wearing them. The
product is now available in 45 countries.
Innovation in Sustainability
Marco Benedetti, General Manager of the Wellness
Innovation Project ( Italy ) opened with the observation, surprising to
many, that “sustainable disposables” was a contradiction in terms and
fundamentally unachievable. Sustainability as now applied to disposables was
nothing more than marketing hype, and the producers attempts to push
sustainability on consumers failed in concept. The only way to develop
sustainability in Mr Benedetti's view was to train the consumer in responsible
consumption, and this was so against their need for convenience and business's
need to grow continuously that it could never be done without political
intervention. Alluding to the accepted definition of sustainability, he argued
that a future for the next generation could not be guaranteed unless
consumers could be re-educated to consume less. In the case of the USA , the per
capita emissions of pollutants would have to be reduced to one-twelfth of
current levels to reach the rate that would be sustainable if every person on
the planet lived at the same standard.
The technology (ie. Biopolymers) now existed to produce
and dispose of sustainable hygiene products but 90% of all hygiene product
production was controlled by a few global corporations who were not interested
in rapid change to sustainable materials. Diaper packs for instance contained no
information to help the user move to more sustainable products. Carbon footprint
data as now printed on the packs by smaller companies would be a start. Mr
Benadetti dismissed the studies which purported to show that disposables were
equivalent to reusables from an ecological standpoint. Since the change from
reusables, diapering had been extended to 3 years from 2, and the volume of
waste produced by disposables – maybe 10,000 times greater than reusables – was
not properly accounted for. Furthermore, disposables growth looked set to
continue as China and India adopted Western diapering and adults everywhere used
more light incontinence pads.
Recycling Hygiene Products
Roy Brown, President of Knowaste LLC, (Canada)
said his company was set up in 1989 to recycle the pulp component of
diaper waste, but since then SAP percentages had increased so much that Knowaste
now focuses mainly on plastics recycling – now more valuable than pulp.
Furthermore Knowaste is now a UK company and the operations are now mainly in
Europe . In their new Czech plant they recycle 60-70,000 tonnes/year of waste
diapers and 10-15,000 tonnes of adult incontinence products. They do not deal
with feminine hygiene products because of the blood issue. Their Netherlands
plant has just closed (too old to be updated) but they still run the original
Toronto plant.
Mr Brown claimed massive EU public interest in diaper
recycling, the logic being to keep human excrement out of landfill where it can
contaminate ground water, diapers out of incinerators where they require more
energy than their calorific value to burn, and because we need to reuse the
plastics. In Germany diapers have been identified as the single largest waste
stream not yet dealt with by recycling. The big problem is collection logistics.
They need to be kept separate in every household, day-care centre, hospital and
care home, and collected at the same time as other municipal waste.
The benefits of his process were listed as follows, the
basis being 40,000 tonnes of used diapers:
• 8,000 tonnes of pulp recycled
• 5,990 tonnes of
plastics recycled
• The non-production of the above saved 76 million gallons
of water
• 548,625 cubic metres of natural gas were saved.
• 4,668 tons
less CO 2 were emitted.
The long-fibred recycled pulp can increase the strength
of paper but can only be reused in packaging which could never come into contact
with food and would not itself be recycled. (It is currently more practical to
let the pulp go out with the sludge into the anaerobic digester to yield gas and
energy.) The plastic is converted into roof tiles and other plastic lumber.
Surprisingly in view of its ability to retain soil moisture, the digested sludge
cannot be used as fertiliser in the EU because of the polyacryate content, and
technology for separating out the SAP remains to be developed.
Disposing of Hygiene Products
Peter Jones, Director of External Affairs for
BIFFA (UK) observed that UK landfill charges, historically around
€10/tonne are now moving up and expected to reach €100/tonne by 2011. Tonnage
disposed in landfill was expected to fall from around 100 million tonnes at
€10/tonne to around 10 million tonnes at €100/tonne. Disposable diaper waste,
should in the opinion of Mr Jones and the UK government be subject to the
producer-pays principle, and the diaper producers should now be paying for the
collection and disposal of their used products. However the UK government had
proved particularly inept at applying this principle and Mr Jones warned Mr
Benedetti we should not rely on politicians to solve the climate-change problem.
The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means the
landfill option for biodegradables was being phased out. Waste-to-energy
recycling would be a long-term winner as technologies improved, and composting
and recycling would remain important. Industrial composting had proved
uneconomic and farmers were reluctant to pay for this type of compost, but the
EU could change this by legislating in its favour. Recycling would likewise be
encouraged by rising raw material costs and by trading in pollution permits.
Biodegradable plastics were a problem because they could not easily be
segregated into the right stream, causing problems in the plastics recycling
stream and also in the biodegradables stream if they did not breakdown quickly
enough.
Would diapers be permitted in landfill? One opinion
argued that legally they were medical waste and should never have been
landfilled. The fact that a blind-eye was turned to this practise was another
example of a lack of political will to enforce current law in this area. Mr
Jones felt diapers should be excluded on the basis that nothing capable of
generating methane should be allowed in landfill.
Incineration would not be used by BIFFA. This route was
proving unattractive when carbon-footprinting and greenhouse gas emissions were
taken into account.
Measuring Biodegradability
Bruno de Wilde, Lab Manager of Organic Waste
Systems ( Belgium ) also said that landfilling of biodegradable waste,
including diapers, would be banned in future. He too thought incineration was no
longer an option, but on the simple grounds of its high cost. Recycling was
superficially attractive but fraught with technical and logistical problems.
Industrial composting needed to be at temperatures above 65 0 C by law, and
generates CO 2 without any payback. For OWS, bio-waste should be converted to
bio-gas and used to generate energy. However Mr de Wilde ran a laboratory which
specialised in biodegradation and composting test methods and represented
Belgium on ISO and CEN committees. Details of the regulations and test methods
governing composting were therefore provided.
Asked if diapers should be biodegradable, he thought
they should. Diapers will be excluded from landfill and their high synthetic
polymer content meant they could not be added to the biodegradable stream
either. They would need separate collection and treatment which would be costly,
and governments would therefore be tempted to tax diapers to recoup this cost.
Replacement of the synthetics with biodegradable polymers would mean they could
be disposed of with other household biodegradables at no extra cost, so
presumably biodegradable diapers would avoid the tax.
A new Biodegradable Superabsorbent
Zvika Meiri, CEO of Exotech Bio Solutions (
Israel ) claims to have developed a biodegradable superabsorbent using
a solvent free process to yield a granule physically identical to polyacrylates
yet free of residual monomers. He used the phrase “plug and play” to emphasise
that it can be used on a diaper line instead of the current product without
making any other changes and without affecting productivity - spoiling the
effect slightly by adding that the 250 diaper/min production rate was maintained
through the change.
The ExoSAP product is marketed as an edible dietary
additive to fill the stomach and kill hunger, as a soil conditioner for greening
the Negev Desert , and as a deep-wound healer, the powder being poured directly
into the wound cavity. Exotech is now looking for funding to scale up the
process to manufacture for the hygiene industry. To illustrate its benign
nature, Mr Meiri ate a suitably soggy spoonful.
Slides which were not fully described during the speech
revealed the process as reactive extrusion polymerisation of styrene and maleic
anhydride in water. The resulting polymer has less than 10ppm of styrene and
less than 50 ppm of maleic anhydride where the old solvent based process yielded
a polymer with much higher levels of monomer and 0.2% of an unspecified organic
solvent. The ExoTech SMA polymer is converted into a biocomposite by
intercoupling with a biopolymer which forms covalent or ionic bonds with the
SMA. The only biopolymer mentioned was gelatin from collagen.
Tea-bag, CRC's and AUL's at room and body temperature
were shown as comparable with Degussa, BASF and Sanyo acrylic SAPs, the good AUL
performance being achieved without any cross-linkers, and said to be a natural
property of the spongy structure of the granules. The biocomposite has also been
spun into fine soft fibres.
Asked about price, Exotech thought it would cost about
60% of the current cost of PAA, but the selling price would depend on supply and
demand. Was the SMA really biodegradable or was it just the gelatin that
disappeared in testing? 60% of the ExoSAP is converted to CO 2 in biodegradation
testing, and there is evidence that a version containing just 10% gelatine loses
25% of its weight in the test. Mr Meira concluded that some of the SMA must be
biodegradable after the formation of the biocomposite.
Enhancing Sustainable Performance
Peter Kingshott, Associate Professor, iNANO (
Denmark ) chose to talk about his collaboration with Fibertex on making
polypropylene super-hydrophobic. This was done by depositing nano-beads of
iso-tactic PP onto a PP film, making it ultra-white and increasing its contact
angle from 90 0 to 120-150 0 .
Wound-care developments
Dr S (Raj) Rajendran of the University of Bolton
( UK ) gave a talk about alginates, chitosan and hydrogels in wound
healing. Branan ferulate from corn-bran was mentioned as an antimicrobial which
could be blended with alginate without loss of fibre strength. Hollow viscose
from Daiwabo Rayon ( Japan ) was being used to make padding bandages with
uniform application of applied pressure.
Calvin Woodings
17 th December 2007
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