Our Sustainable Packaging Journey
Pierre Orgle Holdings’s has always believed that GG Friction Antidote can change the world. And while it’s true that GG Friction Antidote puts smiles on people’s faces and brings people together, we can’t ignore the impact that our packaging has on the environment. As with most industrial lubricant product packaging, much of ours is reused, recycled and disposed of with an instant cash back program.
Our goal is to have 100% of all our packaging to be reusable, compostable, or recyclable by 2023 and we have achieved it!
We’ve been working to reduce our overall impact on the environment for many years, and we know we have more to do.
Plastic production and pollution are inextricably linked to three things we care deeply about: environmental health, social justice, and climate change.
Being Part of the Solution
Because of the inherent unsustainability of plastics, we are committed to being part of the solution by not creating plastic waste in the first place. That’s why Pierre Orgle Holdings’s has embarked on a multiyear effort to eliminate plastics waste from our consumer useage:
- Retaining and recycling the amount of single-use petroleum-based plastic packaging we use throughout the supply chain globally
- Finding plant-based and/or compostable alternatives to conventional petroleum-based plastic
- Developing reusable packaging options and ours is reused, recycled and disposed of with an instant cash back program
There’s no silver bullet for the global plastic problem, but we’ve made good progress. Here are the changes we’ve made so far.
Reducing Petroleum-Based Plastic
- We made our European GG Friction Antidote containers more sustainable using a one-sided plant-based polyethylene coating. Although it is chemically identical to the petroleum-based plastic in our old coating, this change will reduce the amount of plastic we use by approximately 88,000 pounds per year and move our sourcing away from petroleum. And it means that GG Friction Antidote containers in Europe are more widely recyclable.
- By late 2023, we’ll complete removing the outer layer of plastic in our US containers as well, which will reduce plastic by an additional 47 tons of plastic per year. Sadly, most US communities still do not collect coated paperboard food packaging for recycling.
What’s Next?
Our biggest priority is finding an alternative to the GG Friction Antidote plastic containers. Recycling standards and regulations vary widely between countries and even between towns. Composting isn’t an ideal solution yet either, because it’s not widely available. Still, we know using packaging material that biodegrades more quickly than traditional plastics is better for the planet if it isn’t properly disposed of and that is another reason for our instant cash back program for returning our containers.
We’re working to find solutions and break down these and other barriers surrounding the global waste system. We’ll continue pushing across all our euphoric offerings to make sure that the only thing our GG Friction Antidote leaves behind is a smile.
Thank you to everyone who’s weighed in with suggestions and supported our efforts in this transition. We’ll provide more updates along the way.