Nelipak® Corporation (“Nelipak®”) announces it has been named a Dupont™ Tyvek® Sustainable Healthcare Packaging Awards winner in the Sustainability In-Use category for its innovative Ecovate™ header bag product platform.
The Tyvek® Sustainable Healthcare Packaging Awards recognize industry leaders who embrace and drive sustainability innovations throughout the packaging lifecycle. Nelipak was recognized for its innovative Ecovate™ header bag product which is a recyclable[1], mono-material alternative to traditional mixed-material structures used in medical device and pharma drug delivery applications, including ready-to-fill/use (RTF/U) systems.
"The judges for the Tyvek® Sustainable Healthcare Packaging Awards found that Nelipak’s Ecovate™ header bag demonstrates how innovative packaging design can help advance greater circularity in healthcare packaging,” says Lesley Aulick, global business director, DuPont™ Tyvek® Roll Goods. “We are honored Tyvek® has a role in Nelipak’s Ecovate™ solution that shows packaging can be redesigned to reduce material waste and carbon emissions while maintaining performance and meeting regulatory requirements essential to healthcare applications.”
The Ecovate™ product line features healthcare packaging products designed to support circularity by incorporating recycle-ready certification and/or recycled material content. The Ecovate™ header bag product combines mono-axially oriented PE (MOPE), blown co-extruded PE, and Tyvek® with Renewable Attribution. The structure is engineered to maintain the mechanical performance, pinhole resistance and sterile barrier protection required for automated filling while enabling improved end-of-life recyclability[1].
“Healthcare packaging must meet demanding performance and regulatory requirements, and sustainability can no longer be treated as an afterthought,” says Nic Hunt, Head of Global Sustainability at Nelipak. “The Ecovate™ header bag was developed to address that challenge by rethinking the material structure of a widely used packaging format. This recognition from DuPont validates the potential of mono-material packaging to deliver sustainability in healthcare packaging without compromising product performance or regulatory compliance.”
The key sustainability benefits of Nelipak’s Ecovate™ header bags include:
· Third-party certified recyclability[1]: certified by Institut Cyclos-HTP for recycling in the Flex PE stream.
· Lower emissions: manufactured using renewable electricity and has the potential to reduce products greenhouse gas footprint by up to 40%, assuming end-of-life recycling.
· Mono-material design: supports alignment with the European Union's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) Article 6 requirements for mono-material packaging.
[1] Recyclability depends on local infrastructure and as a result all products sold as “recycle ready” may not in practice be recyclable in every place sold.
