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Candy Bar Wrappers Go Plastic Free

Posted on June 30, 2023 by dishanth

For the first time since its launch in 1936, Nestlé is changing the packaging of their famous Mars candy bar wrapper for a more environmentally friendly alternative.

Traditionally, candy bar wrappers are made out of a combination of aluminum and plastic. These materials are difficult to recycle because of how hard it is to separate the two materials. Moreover, the plastic is not biodegradable and can take 10-20 years to decompose. This is at the risk of pieces remaining in the environment longer than that. At the end of their short life, candy bar wrappers will inevitably end up either in landfills or the environment.

New Jersey based TerraCycle has implemented a candy bar wrapper recycling program to address this problem, collecting used wrappers from individuals and institutions.

Candy bar wrappers are recycled at TerraCycle through a process called mechanical recycling. This process involves shredding the wrappers into small pieces, washing them to remove any contaminants, and then melting them down to create new plastic pellets. These pellets can then be used to make new products, such as benches, flower pots, or playground equipment.

TerraCycle offers a variety of recycling programs for candy bar wrappers. These programs are available to individuals, schools, businesses, and organizations. To participate in a program, the only cost is to purchase a collection kit from TerraCycle. The collection kit includes a shipping label and a prepaid shipping box.

Once you have purchased a collection kit, you can collect candy bar wrappers. You can collect wrappers from your own home, school, or workplace. When the collection kit is full, you can ship it back to TerraCycle for recycling.

Nestlé Steps Up

Nestlé is taking the problem of candy bar wrapper waste one step further by completely changing what their chocolates are packaged in. The company is piloting a program to wrap its Mars bars in recyclable paper.

The company also announced that it would be switching the plastic packaging on KitKat bars to 80% recycled plastic, allowing them to be recycled at supermarkets across the UK or put in household recycling bins in Ireland. This is an initiative that could save 1900 tonnes of CO2 annually.

In addition, the company is looking to explore new types of packaging. Nestle is investing hundreds of millions of pounds to redesign thousands of types of packaging. This investment will be put towards meeting its goal of reducing the use of virgin plastics by one-third by 2025. The company also plans for over 95% of its plastic packaging to be designed for recycling by 2025.

Nestlé’s Institute of Packaging Science has been working since 2019 to develop the next generation of packaging materials. In addition to recyclable packaging materials, they are looking at developing refillable or reusable packaging and how to incorporate compostable and biodegradable materials. The Institute’s strategy focuses on five pillars, all of which are linked to reducing waste:

Reducing the use of plastic packaging material
Scaling reusable and refillable systems
Designing better packaging materials
Supporting infrastructure to help make recycling easier
Shaping new behaviours

Nestlé is a global food and beverage company that has been criticized for its water bottling operations. Critics argue that Nestle is extracting too much water from local communities, often with no meaningful compensation to local jurisdictions and areas already facing water shortages. Some have argued that the company doesn’t sell water; the company sells single-use bottles. Bottles that contribute to pollution and environmental damage.

The need for bottled water, is of course, a marketing ploy. Critics argue that Nestle’s marketing campaigns make bottled water seem like a healthier and more convenient alternative to tap water, even though there is no scientific evidence to support this claim.

The plastic-free Mars bars will be available at 500 Tesco stores in the UK for a limited time.

Source Happy Eco News

Novel tech to recycle silver, aluminum from end-of-life solar panels

Posted on September 22, 2022 by dishanth

Scientists from the University of Leicester in the UK have discovered a process to recover silver and aluminum from used PV cells that is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than current recycling processes using mineral acids.

The researchers used the technology on crystalline solar cells measuring 12 × 15 cm, weighing 2 g, and consisting of a 100 µm thick silicon wafer, coated with a 100 nm thick silicon nitride anti-reflective layer on the front side and a 20 µm thick layer of aluminum on the back side, both stripped with silver electrodes approximately 30 μm high.

“First, we place the solar cell in an aluminum chloride solution. The aluminum electrode is removed from the silicon wafer. We use ultrasound to promote the dissolution of the aluminum, which takes place within a few minutes,” researcher Guillaume Zante told pv magazine.

Given the low cost of aluminum, there may be no economic interest in recovering it, but the aluminum salt solution could be used for wastewater treatment purposes, according to the scientists. “In the second step, the silver is dissolved from the solar cell using iron chloride, an oxidizing agent, in a choline chloride or calcium chloride brine, which takes around 10 minutes,” Zante explained, noting that the components of these two brines, or salt water, are found in chicken feed and grit used on roads to avoid ice, respectively, and are thus widely available, cheap, and low on toxicity.

“It is interesting to note that iron dissolved in water cannot oxidize silver, but iron dissolved in the brine can. Using a brine instead of water improves the ability of iron to oxidize silver and improves the solubility of silver in the brine,” Zante said. “This is due to the presence of chloride ions in the brine. The addition of water to the brine dilutes the chloride ions, allowing the silver chloride to precipitate. Silver chloride is easily filtered from the solution.”

This process successfully recovers silver chloride with a purity of 98%, which according to the researchers could be converted into metallic silver in a further step, thereby increasing its purity. The process does not affect the silicon wafer and nitride anti-reflective coating, leaving open the possibility to reuse the silicon in PV panels or processing it for other uses.

The results were obtained in a lab setting, using a few grams of solar cells, and may differ at an industrial scale. However, the authors believe that industrialization is feasible due to their use of cheap, low-toxicity and readily available chemicals. “Since we are using cheap chemicals, the price could be as low as the processing costs with mineral acids and in some cases cheaper, around $0.4 lower per kilogram of solar cell as compared to mineral acids,” Zante affirmed.

They presented their findings in “Efficient recycling of metals from solar cells using catalytic etchants,” which was recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. The scientists are currently developing a strategy to scale up the technology and to extract other metals from waste sources, including bismuth, tellurium and copper from thermoelectric materials, which are used in perovskite, thin film, and wiring and cabling in solar cells, respectively. They are also attempting to extract gold, nickel and copper from printed circuit-boards, as well as neodymium and dysprosium from waste magnets. The academics are part of the Met4Tech project, which supports the creation of a circular economy for technology metals.

Source – pv magazines