Vandersanden adopts sustainable packaging

The Belgian company is making its packaging more sustainable, using recycled material and less ink as part of a transition towards circular packaging.

Vandersanden, Europe’s largest brick-producing family business, plans to reduce its ecological impact by 15% percent by 2023 compared to 2019 and aims to be fully carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve this goal, the Belgian company is making its packaging more sustainable, using recycled material and less ink as part of a transition towards circular packaging.

In 2022, Vandersanden will only use plastic sleeves and shrink-wrap that consists of at least 30% recycled material, and by the end of the year a large proportion of the packaging will contain 50%recycled material. Vandersanden will also introduce an eco-printing process in which a maximum of 10% of the packaging surface will be printed. This has several advantages for the environment, including up to 80% less ink usage and a higher rate of recyclability.

“By using covers and sleeves that consist of 30% recycled materials, 400,000 kg less CO₂ is emitted annually. That is equivalent to planting 17,000 trees,” said Raf Jansen, Chief Operations Officer. “As a family business, we think in terms of generations, not years.”

In order to guarantee the quality of the new sustainable packaging, Vandersanden conducted several strength tests, all of which were positive, and is also developing a method for further reducing the quantity of material used.

Packaging is just one of the areas Vandersanden is working on to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. As well as introducing the new high energy-efficiency brick kiln at Tolkamer, the company is also taking steps to work with return pallets.