Guest: Joel Fischer, AMETEK MOCON
In this episode, Joel Fischer from AMETEK MOCON discusses how consumer demand is driving sustainable packaging innovations like compostable papers and bio-fillers. He highlights industry collaborations and offers insights on balancing sustainability with functionality and infrastructure.
For decades, Joel Fischer has been a leading figure in the package testing industry. As the manager of the world's largest permeation testing lab at AMETEK MOCON, he oversees a team dedicated to ensuring the integrity and shelf life of everything from food and pharmaceuticals to electronics and medical devices.
As a lifetime learner and natural problem solver, Fischer is driven by a genuine passion for finding solutions for customers. He actively collaborates with researchers, has been a featured guest on industry podcasts, and encourages his peers to explore innovative approaches to ensuring package integrity.
Sean Riley: Hi, and welcome to UnPACKed with PMMI. I'm your host, Sean Riley. Today on this episode, we're joined by Joel Fischer from AMETEK MOCON, who discusses how consumer demand is driving sustainable packaging innovations like compostable papers and biofillers. He highlights industry collaborations and offers insights on balancing sustainability with functionality and infrastructure. Let's have a listen.
Sean Riley: So with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Joel.
Joel Fischer: Thank you for having me.
Sean Riley: Well, the pleasure is all mine. Now, today we're diving into the world of testing innovative and experimental new materials, basically with the goal of making them more sustainable. On your end, what makes this an exciting time in package testing?
Joel Fischer: I think it's exciting because we're seeing a lot of innovation occurring and it's being really driven by consumers, what's going on out in the marketplace. They want packaging that they feel good about buying. They want to buy the product that makes them feel good as well. So they're choosing these greener, sustainable package types over a typical package of things they would have saw years ago.
Sean Riley: So I would have to think that there's a lot of innovation then happening in this space.
Joel Fischer: Yeah, there is. There's really a ton of innovations. Companies, they're striving to develop materials that could benefit the planet without compromising the quality. They're exploring options such as coated paper. We're seeing a lot of coated papers being done, things that are very easily compostable. They're also doing things... I think it's pretty novel. They've always had recycled content with virgin blend, but they're trying to do even more with that or add things like biofillers. These are things like cellulose, rice husks that they can add to basically their polymer formulation, and help create that package by reducing the amount of plastics within it. I think that's really cool.
I think one of the most novel things really that we've seen in the past year that's really been moving forward is there's been a lot of polymers out there that are these multi-layered. You hear about K-cups, how they're not recyclable. That's because it's multiple layers within this polymer. It looks like it's simple plastic, but you've got polypropylene, some called EVOH, which is a great oxygen barrier, and you need that because you want coffee to be fresh and you want it to stay good and stay long and taste well when you brew it. But having those layers mixed together makes it very hard then to recycle this. How do you pull them apart and how you do things with that.
So I think one of the interesting things that's really being done is you're taking some of the simple polymers like polypropylene, polyethylene and the like, and then making small layers, but they're gluing them together and the glues and the adhesives are now helping create a better barrier overall. And at the end of the day, they get this higher performance for good barrier packaging so your coffee can be fresh. Other packages, your products are fresh, they taste good, they get shelf life. But now by doing this in this ingenious way of creating all these little layers stacked together with these little binders between them, the material is now recyclable and can go in the stream. So that's actually pretty novel and a lot of research is going into that to say, hey, maybe we can cut out some of these packages that we configured in the past with these multiple layers and that aren't so recyclable, and now we can do that. We can get them into the recycling stream.
Sean Riley: Very interesting. So I'm guessing having this variety of different materials entering the package sphere, for lack of a better word, has to be challenging from a testing and experimental standpoint, no?
Joel Fischer: Yeah, it really is. The polymers where they're doing the multi-layers of them, of the same polymer type, that's pretty straightforward. But we look at compostable, you've got these papers, you see these cups, these coatings. When you look at them and the paper itself falls apart in very high temps and high humidities. And if that's the backbone and the structure that's supposed to be the package, how can that provide the protection that your product needs? So I think a lot of the challenges really are coming up in that compostable marketplace, that segment where these coated papers and these blends and some of these biofillers, testing them and making sure within all these different environments, do they still perform well as an oxygen barrier, needn't put a high humidity around it, or does it fall apart? The environments are challenging to them, and then also the testing of them is a challenge, is more... We're learning more things about how we mount those, how we test those so that's what we're learning every day with those types of materials.
Sean Riley: Interesting. So you had mentioned earlier about multi-layered plastics kind of causing problems, and I guess if you could just give us the 101 on what the issue is with breaking down multi-layered plastics.
Joel Fischer: Normally what's going on is when you go to a recycling center, a lot of these things, if they could pull things out in line and separate them, that's great. Otherwise, they're chopping up in small pieces and they're going to be looking at the densities of them and separating them out that way and the like. Well, one thing you can get out of them is if they want to get BTUs out of them, if they want to burn them to get BTUs and turn them into energy, is the one thing they could actually do with them.
Sean Riley: All right, so earlier we talked about the biofillers. You had really hit on what sounds like a pretty cool solution with biofillers. If you could talk a little bit more about that and how they came about.
Joel Fischer: Yeah, so biofillers are things that you add to it. So groups are already using recycled plastic, they're cleaning it, they're putting it back through, extruding it back out. What they want to do is there's a way to cut down the plastics, and a way to do that is to add these fillers. And what kind of fillers do you use? There's a whole bunch of them, but it's interesting if you can use basically waste from other streams, things like coffee husks and rice hulls, those are called biofillers. We helped on a project that was going on at Iowa State University, where they were putting in these different biofillers and then they're creating bottles out of them, things that you might use for shampoo or other types of bottles.
And what's interesting about them is that the biofillers, they'll give it a color. So now they'll look a little browner, they look more recycled. What they do is they help reduce the overall plastic content, but a key question is, does it impact my product's life, my usability? Is my shampoo in there going to dry out? Is the water vapor within the shampoo going to leave so fast that it's not effective or it starts gelling up or have issues like that? And it's pretty interesting. So we worked with them on a project because they have equipment, they have a permeation equipment, they can do these tests, but to test a number of bottles all configured with different amounts of fillers, different amounts of additives, is a daunting task because a test to look at oxygen permeation isn't something that happens in an hour.
It's not something that happens in 24 hours. These are tests that take three, five, or even seven days for this test to occur. So within our laboratory here, we are able to help them, we have a larger capacity to do testing, have a lot more instruments, and we can compare... Do these additives really impact the barrier characteristics of the bottle? So if it's still a good oxygen barrier, if it's still a good water vapor barrier, then a lot of these additives, vitamins and things that you might put in these beauty products are going to stay good and they're going to stay effective. So that was really... I think of a cool project trying to show do the additives impact the overall permeation rate, and then if they do, how much, and then they can optimize basically the processing.
Sean Riley: And how did you guys get involved with Iowa State in doing that, just out of curiosity?
Joel Fischer: They already had equipment. MOCON as a company we're known for really this niche of testing permeation, oxygen, water vapor, and CO2. Local to us, we're in Minnesota, they're in Iowa, so that's fairly local when you think of the grand scheme of things, and we had a good relationship, and this was something that we liked to do, kind of showcases that when we test materials, a lot of people just think of a pouch sample, like a potato chip bag and the like, but we are testing full packages, these bottles, trays, little blister packs and the like. So it just made sense that we could help them out because we had the capacity to do the testing. Plus they knew that we were really the experts and the source for this testing.
Sean Riley: As the experts, what do you think the future holds for this greener more sustainable packaging?
Joel Fischer: I think compostable is great. There's a lot of good things going on with it. We also need the stream and be able to waste management to handle compost, and I don't think we really have it. I live in the Twin Cities here and we're just kind of starting it out. I think this hot topic of using simple polymers, but creating small layers of it to get higher barriers is really a wave of the future. I think we're seeing a lot of it. I think we need more infrastructure. That has to come along too, because when you look at government mandates and things that are coming, they're almost trying to penalize the store, the brand owners or the store chains.
When those products get into a landfill, if you go back to the soda pop manufacturer, if you go back to the general store and say, "Hey, these are your bags in the landfill, and they're trying to penalize them." So I think the infrastructure is the biggest thing that I'm going to see. Going on in the future is how do we handle the recycling? Can we do it better and we will need to do it better. It's really an interesting landscape out there because there's some things like the horses before the cart of what they're trying to do with mandating things and penalizing things, trying to get things green. But there's some really great initiatives going on, basically those two channels I see with a compostable, and then also with more of the monolayered barrier structures.
Sean Riley: Awesome. That's all that we had. I want to thank you again for taking time to come on the podcast with us, Joel.
Joel Fischer: Oh, you're welcome. And thank you for having me.
Sean Riley: Thanks for listening to this episode of UnPACKed with PMMI. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, that way you won't miss any of the industry insights coming your way. While you're there, we'd really appreciate a rating or review. Want more, visit pmmi.org/podcasts for all of our past episodes and additional resources. Thanks again for tuning in. I'll see you next time.
