With greater emphasis being placed on sustainable design, it's becoming even more important for packaging materials to be recycled, reused or biodegradable.

The days when a corporation could ignore the environment are long gone; the differentiator today is between the reactive and the proactive. Companies can sit on their hands and react to government regulations or market pressures, or they can be pioneers, challenging the status quo with proactive, innovative change. This isn’t altruism, this is good business.

Grossplast, a molding company located in the beautiful state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, is being proactive – helping its customers to change from PVC to Eastman’s Glass Polymer™. The benefits are two-fold: The Glass Polymer™ offers more design flexibility, amenable to a wider range of molding applications with stability that ensures a more repeatable process and less waste. It is also one of the most recyclable plastics on the planet: used plastic doesn’t necessarily have to end up as landfill.

A case in point is Cosinter International and its line of Red Apple™ products. Grossplast developed a series of transparent and opaque containers that are both attractive and environmentally responsible. Cosinter’s range of Red Apple™ suntan and sunscreen products are a staple of Brazilian life, whether it’s the hustle and bustle of downtown Sao Paulo or lazing on the beach in Rio. Grossplast recently switched to The Glass Polymer™, for both aesthetic and environmental reasons. The finished product delivers both high transparency and gloss. It lets the product shine in the aisle and makes everything else look positively dowdy. The high impact resistance of The Glass Polymer™ also puts consumer safety first; ensuring no-one arrives at the beach with a handbag awash with leaking lotion.

“It’s an innovative resin that brings out the absolute best in the product," says Grossplast director Marcelo Grosskop. "And that is something that our client truly believes in.”

Red Apple™ flasks are extrusion blow-molded. This reduces cycle times while resolving other production issues. All things considered, the Red Apple™ brand gets a flask with the right environmental credentials and a beautiful finish.