Kiilto is boosting its efforts to pursue sustainability and best practices in the circular economy. This year, the company is starting to use a proportion of recycled plastic in its five litre plastic canisters in a major portion of its professional hygiene products.
Heidi Kähkönen, packaging development manager, says that the new canisters will feature about 35% of recycled plastic which has been sourced from used consumer packages.
‘This way, we are able to reduce our need for virgin plastic by 20 tonnes each year,’ she said, adding that the volume of virgin plastic now saved is equal to that of 100,000 five litre canisters.
‘With this move, the carbon footprint of the canisters is reduced significantly. Furthermore, for our customers this means that the overall sustainability of their operations is improved, too, as they start using the canisters.’
The canisters have been manufactured in Finland and they fully comply with transport legislation and other regulations. Similarly, the functionality and safety aspects of the new canisters remain solid.
Kiilto expects to launch the first canisters with recycled plastic in April 2022, starting with food service products. ‘We will add new products gradually, and will introduce the new canisters to professional cleaning in the autumn,’ explained Heidi.
She continued, ‘We have been thinking about it for some time, and we are very glad to make it a reality.’
The launch of more sustainable canisters is but one manifestation of Kiilto’s ‘Promise to the Environment’, which dates back to 2018. The Promise to the Environment means, in essence, that the company is constantly seeking new ways to make its operations more sustainable.
Kiilto has set ambitious environmental targets to go with the promise: for instance, it wants to make 70% of its packaging from recycled or renewable materials – as well as be recyclable themselves – by 2025.
‘Our Promise to the Environment involves our entire organisation and everything we do. Accordingly, we have several ongoing projects that relate to the promise,’ said Heidi.
There are new sustainable innovations coming down the ‘green pipeline’ all the time. For example, Kiilto expects to see a major shift in the materials used in personal hygiene products quite soon.
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