Stock material or miscellaneous articles – Hollow or container type article – Paper containing
Patent
1996-07-10
1998-09-22
Dye, Rena L.
Stock material or miscellaneous articles
Hollow or container type article
Paper containing
428219, 428336, 428341, 428513, 383 1, 383113, 383116, 241 4, B65D 3002, B09B 300
Patent
active
058111611
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a package of paper or paperboard having a thin extruded polyethylene coating, which is degradable in a compost. Further, the invention also relates to a method of disposing of such a package by placing the package, with or without compostable contents, in a compost, and use of such a package for storage and transport of compostable waste, such as domestic waste.
BACKGROUND
Lately environmental awareness has made the handling up to now of different types of wastes questionable. In order to manage different types of wastes in the best possible way the waste should be sorted with regard to the final disposal of the waste, e.g. with regard to whether it can be recirculated or not.
One way of disposing of waste is to compost it, in case it is degradable in a compost.
Recently, pre-sorting at the source of domestic waste has become more common. A large part of the domestic waste can be taken care of by composting, and therefore it is appropriate to gather together compostable waste already in the households for either composting in a domestic compost or transporting to a waste container for further transporting to e.g. municipal composting.
It would be convenient for i.a. restaurants, shops and households to assemble compostable waste in a package which, after it has been filled up, can be thrown into the compost together with its contents.
It is known that paper and paperboard are degraded in a functioning compost. Moreover, paper and paperboard constitute a source of carbon, which is necessary for obtaining a good composting result.
The problem of composting paper-containing packages has not been the paper but rather the coatings on the paper or the paperboard. Many new plastic materials have been developed for the purpose of constituting coatings on different packages, which will be possible to dispose of in a compost. For example, in WO 93/07198 is disclosed compostable new fiber and film-forming polyesters. There is also disclosed, in a comparative composting experiment with a non-woven sheet which had been coated with a 30.5.mu.m (1.2 mil) polyethylene layer (corresponding to approximately 27 g/m.sup.2), that the polyethylene layer remained intact (page 33, lines 4-8).
The inert, cheap plastic polyethylene has thus hitherto been considered to be impossible to compost, even as a coating on paper, due to its prolonged stability at environmental conditions.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Surprisingly it has now been found that a package of paper or paperboard having a thin extruded polyethylene coating is degradable in a compost.
How thin the extruded polyethylene coating must be to be degraded in a compost may vary depending on many factors, such as the method of manufacturing, the quality of the compost etc. The thickness of the polyethylene coating should however be less than 25 .mu.m in order to be able to anticipate that the package is degraded in a compost.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a package of paper or paperboard having a thin extruded polyethylene coating which is degradable in a compost.
In one embodiment of the invention the polyethylene coating is perforated by the fibres of the paper or the paperboard. The perforation need not be extensive and/or regular, and so-called "pin holes" here and there in the material are considered to constitute the perforation.
In another embodiment of the invention the amount of polyethylene in the coating is approximately 5 g/m.sup.2 of paper or paperboard.
In yet another embodiment of the invention the package of the invention is a bag for composting of compostable waste.
By the expression "degradable" is intended that the material is degraded, i.e. that it can undergo an irreversible process which leads to a significant change of the chemical and/or physical structure of the material, which is typically characterized by loss of properties (e.g. integrity, molecular weight or structure, mechanic strength) and/or fragmentation.
The paper or paperboard portion of the package may in principle be of any type of pap
REFERENCES:
patent: 4242418 (1980-12-01), Kitagawa
patent: 5178469 (1993-01-01), Collison
patent: 5212219 (1993-05-01), Griffin
patent: 5458933 (1995-10-01), Suskind
Joves H.ang.kan
Nickel Johanna Lofroth
Nordin Bengt
Nordin Roland
Dye Rena L.
Korsnas AB
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