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Elk Packaging’s Customer Vikings and Goddesses adopts compostable packaging for frozen bakery products
July 24, 2024![](https://elkpackaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Elk-Packaging-Vikings-and-Goddesses-Pie-Croissants-sm-150x150.webp)
Elk Packaging’s Customer Vikings & Goddesses Swaps to Compostable Film for Frozen Bakery Products
July 25, 2024Sustainability
It took nearly 10 years for Numi to develop its compostable overwrap for individual tea bags.
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Compostable Overwrap for Tea Bags
Listening to the stakeholders behind this determined effort is a vivid reminder of how many factors must be weighed before a compostable film can be commercialized.
By – Pat Reynolds Jul 21, 2020
It took about 10 years, and it wasn’t without a setback or two. But Oakland-based Numi Organic Tea now has an overwrap for individual tea bags that is ASTM D6868-substantiated as compostable in commercial composting facilities. Developed by sustainable packaging company Elk Packaging , the three-layer adhesive lamination consists of, from the outside in, paper/cellophane/polylactic acid. The cellophane layer is Futamura’s Natureflex cellophane, a clear cast film made in Futamura’s plant in the UK of renewable wood pulp from managed plantations. According to Jake Hebert, Senior Manager of Sales and Marketing at Futamura, the gas barrier properties of this particular Natureflex are between 0.03 and 0.06 cc of O2/100 sq in./24 hr. “The crystalline nature of cellophane makes it a very effective oxygen barrier,” he adds. “In this particular application we include a very light metallization for moisture barrier. It’s such a minute amount it’s barely detectable when the material breaks down in the compost facility. Whatever does remain doesn’t hinder the degradation process because the aluminum is effectively inert, a naturally occurring element.”