News
PWP Industries creates 'green' Subway salad bowl
April 16, 2009
VERNON, Ca. — Subway has partnered with PWP Industries to make its plastic salad bowls and lids smaller and more environmentally friendly, PWP has announced.
"Our business is about serving convenient, yet healthy foods. We have a responsibility to reduce our impact on the environment so that we can continue to serve people around the world in a sustainable way," said Subway World Headquarters spokesperson Elizabeth Stewart, director of marketing & sustainability. "By switching our salad bowl materials to a more environmentally friendly profile and reducing the amount of plastic needed to produce them, we can attain significant conservation of our natural resources."
PWP approached the Subway salad bowl re-design in two phases, both of which were aimed at improving the environmental profile of the bowl.
First, salad bowl materials were changed from rarely recycled OPS to PETE, the No. 1 most recycled plastic. The Subway bowl uses PETE resin combined with 10 percent post-consumer recycled content (PCR), instead of 100 percent virgin resin. This recycled content mainly consists of soda and water bottles, which diverts approximately 270,000 pounds of plastic from landfills every year.
In the next phase, a strategic package re-design reduced the amount of plastic used and, at the same time, achieved a dramatically different look for the bowl. By introducing more swirls, which reduce surface area, it takes less plastic to produce than a straight-walled bowl. The second phase also addressed reducing the diameter of the package from 10 inches to 9 while still maintaining the same 32-ounce volume.
With these changes, the new salad bowl will:
- Reduce the amount of plastic material used annually by 711,780 pounds and save the equivalent of 5,488 barrels of oil annually.
- Reduce 19,540 cases of corrugate annually.
- Reduce the carbon footprint by 20.9 percent or 84.8 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per thousand containers produced.
PWP in-house recycling
In another step toward sustainability, PWP, in the second quarter of 2009, will open one of the first in-house plastics recycling facilities by a thermoforming company. PWP will work with Coca-Cola Recycling LLC to recycle PETE post-consumer bottles into FDA compliant resin for food contact.
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from QSR Web.
