SUSTAINABILITY
GSK’s Head of Sustainability on Advil Bottles’ 20% Plastic Reduction KEREN SOOKNE, DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL CONTENT TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS 1. The new material will reduce the amount of plastic in the environment by nearly 500,000 pounds annually.
1. The technology was seven years in the making, and is being evaluated for use in other applications.
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t’s no secret that consumers are demanding environmentally friendly products and packaging, and this includes over-thecounter (OTC) medications. In April, GSK Consumer Healthcare announced its commitment to reducing the plastic in over 80 million Advil bottles by 20% (annual volume), which the company reports will result in a reduction of nearly 500,000 pounds of plastic in the environment annually. The updated bottles have already begun hitting retail shelves in the U.S. The Advil portfolio will have transitioned by 2022 online and on retail shelves nationwide, with the exception of Advil “easy open” bottles. “The first focus has been to do this in the U.S. because that’s where we have our biggest Advil business and where we can create the biggest impact in terms of saving plastic,” says Sarah McDonald, Vice President of Sustainability at GSK Consumer Healthcare. “So that’s been the first focus, and then we’ll move onwards from there to other geographies.” Healthcare Packaging spoke with McDonald (virtually) to discuss the project, goals, and more.
Resin technology GSK says the initiative is a first-of-its-kind sustainable plastic technology for OTC medicines. This new barrier resin technology reduces the amount of resin required to mold and craft the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles, while maintaining the same barrier protection properties. HDPE is recyclable in the #2 stream in the U.S. This is accomplished via a nucleating agent added into the resin itself—GSK worked with Dow and Milliken on the materials side and Alltrista Plastics on the component manufacturing side. “We have a bi-modal HDPE resin and by adding this agent, it allows us to reduce the quantity of plastic that we use to make the bottles while maintaining the same protective barrier qualities,”
3. GSK is also ramping up installation of on-site solar energy generation where conditions allow, including Nairobi and Brazil.
explains McDonald. “This means we don’t need a discreet barrier layer so it does not impact recyclability.” This material change allows for a 20% reduction in material usage for HDPE bottles while maintaining all critical performance characteristics of the bottle. Alltrista molds bottles via compression blow forming (CBF)—GSK did not have to purchase new machinery. (CBF continuously extrudes plastic, cuts it into “clumps”, and transfers the clumps into compression cavities where they are pressed into preforms and stretch-blown into finished bottles.) “The success of our reduction is a combination of materials and more accurate molding using CBF, which allows for even distribution of the remaining resin,” explains Edward Candelaria, Technical Lead for the project and Director of Packaging Technology CH Americas at GSK. Unrelated to the resin change and CBF, GSK also implemented an 11% reduction in the weight of the caps (the process and materials remained the same). McDonald says, “It required considerable testing to reach confidence that we were hitting the reduction we wanted and also the level of protection we needed. It also needed a lot of testing to make sure we were confident in passing regulatory requirements. It was about seven years of work behind the scenes together with our partners on the materials side and on the manufacturing molding side.” “We’re really pleased to get this on the market and proud of the work from our partners as well. We couldn’t have achieved this without our partners, Dow, Milliken, and Alltrista. It was a team effort, and we’re very excited to see this coming through onto shelf because consumers more and ↖ A material change allows for a 20% reduction in material usage for HDPE Advil bottles while maintaining all critical performance characteristics of the bottle.
38 | Healthcare Packaging • July/August 2021
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