La vie est belle says goodbye to polypropylene packaging and switches to a 100% recycled PET packaging. This revolution is a new step in the quest for a more sustainable way of working. It’s an intermediate step that allows La vie est belle as a company to drastically reduce its impact in the short term, in anticipation of a fully circular packaging.
La vie est belle has been using polypropylene packaging (PP packaging) for many years. After all, plastic still delivers the best results in terms of food safety. No other packaging can offer the same quality and guarantees of a sealed plastic tray under a protected atmosphere. However, the impact of the PP packaging remains a pain point. For La vie est belle, sustainability is a core value and the team has been looking for food-safe sustainable alternatives for more than 20 years.
In 2017, La vie est belle was one of the only Belgian producers to join the European research project GLOPACK. The project is a collaboration between universities, research centers, packaging producers and food companies and aims to develop circular packaging that does not rely on fossil resources. The project is promising, but at the moment there is no outlook of an end product that can be used on a large scale.
In the meantime, La vie est belle has investigated all kinds of options with various partners: PLA, biobased plastics, recycled plastic, cardboard, … you name it, we gave it a try. The evolution of these projects convinced La vie est belle to switch to recycled PET – as an intermediate step in the search for fully circular packaging.
La vie est belle has deliberately chosen for a packaging that is produced from 100% recycled PET and which, after collection, can be reprocessed several times (12 to 20 cycles) into a 100% food-safe and recycled PET packaging. PET collection has already been set up in neighboring European countries*. The La vie est belle r-PET packaging will originate from these collection points and contains no basic raw materials. It is precisely by opting for 100% recycled material and the high number of cycles in reuse that this solution offers the ideal way out in the short term to work more sustainably. * In Belgium, the collection of PET by the government will only start from the beginning of 2021. From then onwards, you as a conscious consumer, can also contribute to this circular process. 😊
* In België wordt de inzameling van PET vanuit de overheid pas vanaf begin 2021 opgestart. Vanaf dan kan u als bewuste consument ook onmiddellijk uw steentje bijdragen. 😊