Innovative Packaging: Meltable Bags and Sustainable Toothpaste Tubes

Winners of the 2020 BEYONDPLASTIC Awards, a contest meant to surface for new designs to remove the use of single-use plastic packaging in society, brought innovative and elegant solutions to make common consumer items biodegradable and maybe even more important, CO2-free.

The contest, launched by inventor, entrepreneur, and founder of beyondplastic.net, Ulrich Krzyminski, features 4 categories—with gold, silver, and bronze winners in each one.

“The award is directed towards students, designers, engineers, makers, creators, inventors, artists: Everyone who has an idea, concept, prototype, or even a solution already in market, which supports less single-use plastic is welcome to take part,” - Krzyminski

Image source: eu.wastebased.co

Next generation bags

In "Most Innovative Solution" category, a bag that dissolves in boiling water has taken the first place. Jack Cleary and the Wastebased team from the United Kingdom call it The Item Bag 2.0, a product that surely belongs in every dry-cleaning store in the world. The bag aims replace polyethylene and polypropylene plastic bags, used to transport virtually every clothing item on the planet, with bags that will biodegrade after they’re discarded.

The Item Bag 2.0 simply dissolves in both saltwater and hot water, leaving behind nothing but bio-ink and some non-toxic minerals which can be poured down the drain, safely. It’s also carbon negative, as opposed to carbon neutral, meaning that the production process of the Item Bag 2.0 removes more carbon from the air than it adds: 100% more, to be precise, which is truly an admirable feat..

The company also makes compostable e-commerce mail envelopes, which are 100% waterproof but degrade in nature after 6 months. In addition, the green company plants trees to offset any carbon cost of operations which they can’t make sustainable, having planted almost 1,000 trees in Ireland, Scotland, Romania, and Madagascar, already.

Image source: http://coolpaste.com.br

Cool Paste

A Brazilian team took silver in the category ‘Most Practical Impact’ for their effort to reduce plastics in the classic toothpaste tube, which cannot be reused at all. The plastic toothpaste tube received an eco-friendly makeover in the workshops of Coolpaste.

Instead of surrounding the plastic tubes with cardboard packaging, the tubes become the entire package. Made of durable cardboard material that is not only sustainable, but biodegradable, it hangs on store shelves via a simple tab, eliminating the paper and chemical inks required to manufacture the boxes. The sustainability extends even to the cap—which is made from bio-esters derived from things like cornstarch, tapioca roots, and sugarcane.

Check out the competitions webpage for more contestants, these were merely our favorites, there are many others who deserve the spotlight.