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ESSI – the first Finnish circular economy carrier bag is the best choice for the environment and for Finland Amerplast is launching together with Ekokem a new carrier bag, called ESSI circular bag which is a carrier bag partly made from plastic packaging waste collected from Finnish households. ESSI – the first Finnish circular bag is the best choice for environment and for Finland. It is a concrete example of Finnish circular economy in action. CIRCULAR ECONOMY is a model where materials circulate in society and can be used again. Amerplast and Ekokem have built a base for the Finnish circular economy of the plastics and the circular bag is the concrete example of this. THE BEST CHOICE for environment and for Finland is to choose ESSI circular bag at grocery store. Today Finns are using on average 55 plastic carrier bags annually per person. In Europe the annual carrier bag consumption is on average 198 carrier bags per person. ESSI CIRCULAR BAG is carbon neutral and has the smallest CO2 footprint compared to any other carrier bag in grocery store. It is one of the first Finnish products that is manufactured from post-consumer plastic thus it reduces significantly the need for virgin raw materials. Plastic recycling has a great role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ESSI can be reused in many ways at homes. It is always better to recycle plastic bags than to burn them as energy. As the final step of the reuse, ESSI can be utilized as a garbage bag, which removes the need for separate garbage bags. When returned to Rinki eco take-back points, plastic bags are reused as a raw material for new circular bags. Amerplast manufactures carrier bags that are made of up to 95% recycled material. It is best for the environment to reuse plastic as a raw material before eventually using it as energy. PLASTIC REFINERY CIRCULAR BAG HOUSE HOME Ekokem’s CIRCO® recyclates are manufactured from separately collected household plastic waste and industrial, retail and agricultural waste plastics at Riihimäki Finland. STORE START FINISH www.kiertokassi.fi ESSI encourages further collection and recycling of plastic. Annually in Finland there are 117 000 tonnes of plastic in consumer packaging. There are around 500 Rinki eco take-back points for recycling the packaging. The collection of household packaging waste is organized by Suomen Uusiomuovi and Rinki Ltd. ESSI is the answer to conscious customer demand. Customers can choose ESSI circular bag in 2017. The Ecolexobag project by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland indicates that increasing the percentage of recycled material further decreases a plastic bag’s carbon dioxide emissions. ESSI – the best choice for carrier bag proven by research Optikassi research* showed that carrier bags made from recycled plastics were a better choice than a cotton bag, paper bag or biodegradable bag. Now Amerplast has launched ESSI that is even better for environment since it is partly made from recycled plastic packaging waste collected from households: • Minimum 45% of its recycled raw materials come from household plastic packaging waste. This raw material has a smaller carbon footprint compared to virgin raw materials. • Minimum 45% of its recycled raw materials come from industrial sources. In Finland 32100kg of greenhouse gases per household were produced in 2017. The emissions of carrier bags make about 0,06% of annual emissions of one household. OptiKassi research shows the superiority of recycled carrier bag Environmental effects of shopping bag other than climate effect * Plastic Recycled plastic Cotton Biodegradable plastic Paper Relation between smallest and largest value Nonrenewable energy (MJ) Water consumption (litres) Land usage (m2) 1,3 0,12 0,31 In order to reach the same level in greenhouse gas emissions than of one recycled carrier bag (60% recycled materials) you need to use: ~251 times cotton bag 0,0009 ~6 times biodegradable bag 0,08 0,0009 ~4 times paper bag 21 357 0,8 ~4 times plastic bag made from virgin materials 0,88 0,13 0,01 1 1,1 0,001 70 4500 900 The annual climate change effects of carrier bags kg CO2 equiv. 1,2 Recycled plastic 2,4 Cotton 2,8 Paper 3,6 Plastic Circular bag containing over 90% of recycled materials from which around 50% is recycled material made from consumer packaging waste is clearly an even better choice. Can the carrier bag be reused multiple times, are extra garbage bags needed and how it eventually will be recycled have an effect on its final climate change effects. There are also differences of the carrying capacities and volumes which have an effect on the amount of goods you can carry in one bag. 4,8 Biodegradable plastic The above examines the probable value (median) of annual climate change effects of studied carrier bags (cotton bag is used 1-2 times and other bags are used 100 times). By 88% probability the recycled carrier bag is a better choice than paper and cotton bags and by 100% probability it is a better choice compared to plastic and biodegradable bags. * Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and the Technical University of Lappeenranta executed OptiKassi study. The comparative study published in 2009 examines the life cycle impacts of the shopping bags used in Finnish retail sector with an emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions. AMERPLAST, founded in Tampere, Finland 1952, is a forerunner in sustainable packaging with AmerGreen and transforming the flexible packaging industry into an environmentally sound business. Company started manufacturing of recycled carrier bags already in 1995. Amerplast has around 400 employees.