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A specialist in zamak packaging solutions, TNT Global Manufacturing is on a mission to communicate its star material’s sustainable aspect by looking to create a closed-loop recycling scheme.
“Zamak has long been associated with packaging that is heavy, unrecyclable and therefore polluting, but this couldn’t be further from the truth,” TNT Global Manufacturing co-founder Thomas Diezinger told Luxe Packaging Insight earlier this year. “In fact, when zamak is recycled by smelters with this specific expertise, it retains its purity and is in no way degraded in the process. It can be recycled ad infinitum”. The supplier also adds that a mono-material zamak cap is more sustainable as the piece is entirely recyclable, whereas a weighted multi-material cap is not.
With this in mind, the supplier is looking to kick start a recycling scheme by gathering together beauty brands, retailers, sorting operators and smelters, the idea being to create a program similar to initiatives in the area of premium perfumery glass; the consumer is incentivized to bring back the zamak perfumery caps to the retail store. The components are then sorted and sent to a foundry. “What interests us is to allow zamak caps to evolve in a closed loop process,” notes co-founder Toby Cattermole. In a bid to create a visual marker for the project, TNT Global Manufacturing created a logo (pictured below); the label will guarantee the material’s traceability, be it virgin or recycled as well as its industrial grade.
“While PCR zamak is currently more costly than virgin zamak, the more we convince our partners to recycle, the more volumes will grow and costs will come down,” Diezinger notes.
“Our ambition is to accelerate and amplify the recycling of end-of-life zamak components in cooperation with our partners, so that our zamak components join the long list of manufactured products that are already recycled,” the supplier concluded in a statement.
