December 2020 – ARGAL achieves the ECOSENSE certification for its facilities in Miralcamp (Spain), on implementing its strategy alignment with packaging sustainability.
ARGAL is one of the benchmarks in the Spanish market for the manufacture of meat slices, with an annual volume of over 10 million kilos and a presence in more than 30 countries. The priority of the food company is to give preference to packaging solutions with a minimum carbon footprint, reduced environmental impact and a high percentage of recycled material, such as thermoformed PET trays. In addition, the trays are eco-designed to maximize their recyclability and to ensure that, after consumption, the material is suitable to be reintroduced into the production stream to made up new PET containers.
To obtain the ECOSENSE certificate, the ARGAL ALIMENTACIÓN facilities in Miralcamp (Spain) have undergone an inspection process by an entity accredited by ENAC under the ISO/EC 17020 standard to verify compliance with the requirements of the ECOSENSE procedure for food packers established by the PLASTIC SENSE Foundation.
With the ECOSENSE certification, the Spanish company contributes to consolidate a circular economy model in the sector of thermoformed PET containers. In this way, it ensures traceability and transparency in the reincorporation of recycled material in the manufacture of new PET containers from its monolayer and multilayer PET packaging production waste. Thanks to ECOSENSE, not only does it is prevented that the final destination of this type of waste was landfilling, but it is also reduced greenhouse gas emissions by using less energy and resources than if virgin plastic was used in the manufacture of their packaging.
The final purpose of ECOSENSE is to increase the transformed volume of PET packaging waste that is subsequently incorporated into new trays, that is, in food applications with the same value as the original ones. Thus, it contributes toensuring that 10 million tonnes of recycled plastics find their way into new products by 2025, according to the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy.