PSSMA Introduces New Recycling Symbol for Paper Shipping Sacks

 

The Paper Shipping Sack Manufacturers’ Association (PSSMA), Coopersburg, Pa., USA, this week introduced a new recycling symbol for printing on unlined paper shipping sacks that are used to package food or food ingredients. The symbol, downloadable from the PSSMA website, indicates that certain sacks can be recycled in the same collection stream as corrugated cardboard.Its introduction is a key piece of the industry’s new communications campaign to promote recovery for recycling of paper shipping sacks that are used to transport food products.  

An industry webinar will be hosted on June 23, 2016, at 2:00 p.m. EST, to provide members an overview of the campaign materials and offer them a chance to ask questions and learn how they can carry the message to their employees and customers. To register, send an email to PSSMA.

  

The new PSSMA website, launched last month, now includes a robust online area for recycling and other sustainability information around paper shipping sacks. This new on-package recycling symbol is available as well as guidelines for its use, a value ranking system for recovered sacks, and more. A downloadable information kit is also hosted on the site’s Sustainability page. It is publicly available for end users and industry members alike; the info kit is designed to help end users understand how they can optimally recover food paper shipping sacks.Members will find the info kit useful for informing their customers (producers who package food products in paper shipping sacks), who will likewise find it useful for educating their customers (the buyers of those food products, who ultimately recover or dispose of the sacks).

Paper shipping sacks are commonly used for transporting products such as sugar, flour, grains, and other food ingredients. End users who receive those products, including bakeries, restaurants, foodservice providers, institutional kitchens, and other entities that prepare food for consumption, are now able to recycle the sacks after they have been emptied. When they see the new recycling symbol on a paper shipping sack, they can confidently throw the used, clean, empty sacks into the same collection with cardboard boxes ("old corrugated containers," or OCC).

The PSSMA recently established that unlined food paper shipping sacks can be recovered with OCC, in one waste stream, making it much easier and more cost-effective for end-users to recycle them. "The new recycling symbol, when printed on the proper shipping sacks, will help our industry increase our recovery rate. When users recycle the unlined food paper shipping sacks, they can save money on waste disposal and even earn revenue from recovered material, while improving their own sustainable business practices," said Richard Storat, president of PSSMA.

PSSMA is the national trade association of U.S. producers of multiwall shipping sacks. Its mission is to provide member companies with programs and services which further the industry’s objectives and, in doing so, promote and enhance the welfare of the industry.Currently, PSSMA’s sack-producing members produce approximately 90% of the multiwall shipping sacks made in the U.S. In addition, PSSMA is supported by more than 50 domestic and international associate members, suppliers of goods, and services to the U.S. multiwall industry.