SCGC Joins Forces with Partners to Transform Packaging for Sustainability

Business partners are key to long-term business advancement as partnerships with companies that share the same goals and commitment can inspire innovation and create value for customers. This is evident in SCG Chemicals Public Company Limited (SCGC)’s partnerships with leading brands to transform familiar packaging to make them more eco-friendly and better aligned with sustainability goals.

Lightweight bottle caps, made with less plastic

If you look around, you’ll notice that plastic is the most popular material for beverage packaging and containers and is made into cups, bottles, and even bottle caps. This is particularly true for carbonated beverages, where millions of bottles are produced each year in Thailand. Given the scale, how nice would it be if the amount of plastic used in this packaging could be reduced?

As an innovation that reduces the amount of plastic used in bottle cap production can prevent the emission of hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases each year, SCGC has innovated special-grade SX002J and SX002JA resins using SMX^TM technology under POLYMER^TM, both of which boast strength and durability and reduce the amount of plastic required without compromising the ability to keep the drink fizzy.

SX002JA has been tested by leading carbonated drink brands to be ideal for lightweight bottle caps, as it can reduce the weight from the original 2.15 grams to just 2.0 grams. In addition, both SX002J and SX002JA have been given a SCG Green Choice label in the Circularity category. Thanks to SMX^TM technology by SCGC GREEN POLYMER^TM, the new innovations can forestall the emission of over 458,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, thus helping to mitigate the global warming crisis in a sustainable manner.

Monomaterial pouches for easy recycling

Another family of widely used packaging is flexible packaging. While similar to regular plastic bags in appearance, flexible packaging is generally multi-material in nature, composed of layers of films with different properties that are glued together. As these materials have different melting points and cannot be extricated once fused, their recyclability is limited at best.

In response, SCGC has innovated Recyclable Packaging Solution to create flexible packaging that can be efficiently recycled and used in place of existing available options. The innovation has been well received among brands seeking to switch to green packaging, with SCG partnering with Lion (Thailand) to pilot a recyclable refill pouch for Shokubutsu shower cream, with plans to expand to other products in the future.

As Lion (Thailand) seeks to achieve net-zero emissions and phase out the use of virgin plastic in its packaging by 2050, this partnership with SCG will lead both organizations, a packaging resin producer and a commodity product manufacturer, towards long-term sustainability goals.

Same packaging, made with high-quality PCR

For many brands, plastic is the material of choice for household product packaging, such as bottles for washing detergents, fabric softeners, shampoo, conditioners, and dish detergent, thanks to its great functionality. However, this type of packaging is rarely reused, leading to a large amount of used plastics from households.

Wouldn’t it be better if these post-consumer plastics could be recycled into resin with quality on par with the virgin counterpart? Recognizing the value of used plastic, SCGC has innovated high-quality post-consumer recycled resin (PCR) so as to breathe new life into it. To put it to real-world use, SCGC has joined forces with Unilever Thailand to replace their HDPE bottles with recycled HDPE (rHDPE) bottles, marking the first-time ever in Thailand that used plastics from households are processed into high-quality PCR. The collaboration begins with the gallon bottles of Sunlight dishwashing liquid.

The primary goal of this SCGC-Unilever collaboration is to reduce virgin resin use and increase the use of high-quality post-consumer recycled resin (PCR) in Unilever packaging as well as to ensure that such packaging is recyclable and can be processed into new packaging, thus creating demand for rHDPE packaging and promoting at-source waste separation and recovery.

Through collaborations with leading brands to transform packaging, SCGC is giving consumers an opportunity to choose quality products and simultaneously take care of the environment while also helping these brands to pass on environmental commitments to millions of consumers to create a more sustainable world together.