From the SEE Impact Report: Proactive Partnerships
Originally published in the SEE Impact Report 2022
SEE Automated Tire Wrap Solution
Reducing plastic waste while improving labor efficiency and product velocity
To meet the growing challenge of manual sortation processes and plastic waste in tire packaging operations, SEE created the world's first automated tire wrapping solution designed to eliminate special handling fees for their customers and prevent rolling of tires to ensure safety and equipment integrity during the sorting and delivery process. Custom engineered using SteathWrap™ shrink wrapping technology, the application combines PE recyclable film with a corrugate tray and ultrasonic welded bond. The finished pack reduces plastic material weight by 65% compared to the PVC nonrecyclable film solution, easily conveys through UPS sortation facilities with no additional handling required, and eliminates safety concerns from rolling tires. This solution reduces labor requirements by 60%, saves warehouse space, and can increase fulfillment velocity up to 7X.
BUBBLE WRAP® Brand High-Recycled Content Cushioning With Circular Resin
Partnering to deliver scalable circular solutions across the retail value chain
SEE is partnering with a national retail customer and large recycler to create the first BUBBLE WRAP® brand high-recycled content cushioning with circular resins. The cushioning has a minimum of 60% post-industrial recycled content and 30% circular post-consumer recycled material—adding up to 90% recycled content.
This collaboration transforms plastic waste into highperforming, cost-effective, sustainable packaging. It diverts the customer’s distribution waste, including BUBBLE WRAP® brand cushioning and other polyethylene films, and then recycles and reuses it in the packaging SEE supplies to them.
Incorporating circular resin into BUBBLE WRAP® brand cushioning helps this customer meet its sustainability goals and increases its brand reputation without sacrificing product protection and performance. This partnership increases the use of recycled content and reduces the virgin material needed in shipping materials. It also validates the viability of a circular system based on mechanical recycling and mass balance attribution.
Our circular business model creates costefficiencies and new sources of recycled content, as well as boosts the marketable value of plastic packaging. By closing the loop, we create benefits for partners across the value chain.
Fortem® Biopharmaceutical Film
Scalable solutions for biopharmaceuticals
Developed specifically for bioprocessing applications and exclusively licensed to Cytiva, a technology and services provider for biotherapeutics, Fortem® biopharmaceutical film is engineered and patented by SEE as an inert film platform suitable for upstream bioprocessing. The 10-layer architecture provides structural integrity for control of extractables and leachables. The film was developed to maintain critical performance attributes, such as container integrity and gas barrier properties, under forces associated with rocking bioreactors and liquid transport. It’s produced in SEE’s ISO 7 cleanroom and maintained to class 100 particulate levels.
CRYOVAC® Brand Darfresh® Mono-PET Rollstock
Reducing waste across the supply chain and extending product shelf life
Developed for JBS Foods Australia to keep its Swift brand lamb cutlets secure for optimum presentation and protection, CRYOVAC® brand Darfresh® mono-PET rollstock leverages specially formulated high-barrier top and bottom webs to create a vacuum skin that fits around the product, leading to less waste across the supply chain. By reducing the thickness of the tray, 5,000 kilograms (kg) of plastic is eliminated each year.
The tamper-evident clear pack, which allows consumers to see both sides of the product, is designed to prevent physical and microbial spoilage and deliver an extended fresh-chilled shelf life of 18 days. Collectively, the program has enabled the recovery of more than 60,000kg of packaging through council curbside collection programs. The solution earned gold in the food packaging category and silver in the sustainable packaging category at the 2023 Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Awards.
