A blog about transparent triggers? Absolutely! Recently, we’ve seen an increasing focus on using fewer colorants in packaging. That’s very nice for those companies, but it’s not very innovative. Our triggers have been colorless for years and do not contain metal parts. So: easy to recycle.
You know them: the brightly colored triggers (or spray heads) of cleaning agents. Green, red, blue… colors that stand out nicely. But in the professional market they also have a function, says purchasing manager Rob Kuijpers. “The colors indicate what type of product it is. Green is a floor cleaner, red is intended for scrubbing sanitary facilities, and with a bottle with a blue trigger you can clean the interior.”
So very convenient, all those colors. But… totally not sustainable. Rob: “Colored plastic is impossible to recycle into transparent plastic. The result remains a cloudy, dirty color. Not surprising, because it’s made from petroleum products.” is going to Not together. You also didn’t throw the mixed laundry in the white laundry.” It is only possible to recycle colored packaging into a colored packaging or to downcycle it into something else.
More mono
That’s why our triggers are always transparent. And the best part is: they have been that way since 2014! The same goes for the caps, pumps for dispensers and other closures we use. According to Rob, that has everything to do with our sustainability strategy.
“Our closures have been transparent since 2014”
“At Spectro, we work every day on minimizing our impact. So the bottom line is: the more mono-material we use for our packaging, the better we can recycle them. Our packaging is therefore made from as much of one type of plastic as possible: HDPE. That is easy to melt and therefore such packaging is excellent for recycling.”
Recycle Factory
To strengthen our ambition to recycle as much as possible, we have introduced the Recycle Factory Conceived. We recycle and reuse empty packaging in our own full-time management. Rob: “We challenge our customers to return as many packaging items as possible. We provide them with a collection container where they can collect the old packaging. We then pick it up for them.”
Back at Spectro, we recycle the used packaging, then shred it. With that shredding we make new packaging. “Pure win-win,” concludes Rob. “But that can only be done with transparent triggers. That’s why ours have been doing that for almost ten years already. Speaking of innovation!”