Circular economy for an even more sustainable HybridBox
We wanted to make Hybrid Box, our dedicated container, even more sustainable. We are talking about a collapsible container that, right from its inception, was planned to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the industry, reducing the size and weight of the container while eliminating single-use materials. The design worked and the success of the container was immediate. But we wanted to go further.
With the passage of time and seeing that some of the fleets currently in use may be approaching the end of their useful life, we tackled the "Circular Economy applied to the development of sustainable Hybrid Box" project, which focused on studying the possibility of reusing textile and plastic materials, which are the key components of this product. The project was funded by AVI under the Value Chain category.
Applying eco-design principles
The project has focused, as planned, on studying the recyclability of the components of the Hybrid Box containers. Our most important effort has been to study whether it was possible to reintroduce into our value chain both plastics and textiles that will have to be discarded when the containers complete their life cycle.
This study involved a thorough evaluation of the product, which helped us to rethink the containers along the lines of eco-design. Our goal was ambitious and our result was very interesting: to create a product that, in the plastic part, will be monomaterial, which will allow an easier recycling in the future, without the need to manually separate the components.
