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Monterey Mushrooms introduces sustainable mushroom packaging

baMonterey Mushrooms is cultivating more than a meal — it's nurturing a sustainable future. This spring the company is making a significant change to enhance the recyclability of its mushroom packaging by incorporating near-infrared sortable material in its recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate thermoformed tills.

The company's rPET tills are produced using 100 percent post-consumer recycled materials sourced entirely from North America. This means the material used in the tills has already had a prior life, thus reducing plastic waste in landfills and contributing to a circular economy. The use of NIR sortable colorant ensures that the packaging can be properly sorted and recycled into new products.

PET and PETE are abbreviations for the plastic: Polyethylene Terephthalate. It is the most commonly used plastic among consumers and has the recycling symbol 1. Comparing PET/PETE with rPET, the difference is the r, which stands for recycled. The r denotes that this material is a recycled version of PET/PETE plastic.

By using rPET, the mushroom industry can give multiple lives to mixed-color recycled PET materials. rPET with NIR sortable colorant can potentially provide long-term cost advantages compared to other colors, including clear rPET.

“In the 1980s, Monterey Mushrooms revolutionized the retail industry by introducing pre-packaged mushrooms,” said Bruce Knobeloch, vice president of product development and marketing. “Since then, the mushroom industry has been repurposing colored rPET, such as opaque blue, opaque green, and black rPET plastics, to give them a new life. We believe using clear rPET is wasteful and a regressive step for our industry.”

The company considers its tills with the NIR sortable colorant as a black alternative color.  The hue will vary between blue, green, purple and black as the recycled base material used to manufacture the tills will change.

“By choosing black alternative rPET with NIR sortable colorant, we're not just packaging mushrooms; we're packaging a greener future,” said Knobeloch.

You can learn more by watching the Monterey Mushrooms video, “A Greener Future, with NIR Sortable Colorant Recycled PET.”

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