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Tetra Pak and Lactogal have launched an aseptic beverage carton featuring a paper-based barrier. Tetra Pak aims to launch the packaging on a significant scale, with 25 million cartons already released in Portugal. The Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf carton is made of approximately 80% paperboard, increases the renewable content to 90%, reduces the carton's carbon footprint by 33% and has been certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Trust. The top sustainability concerns facing F&B businesses today are greenhouse gas emissions from food waste and plastic littering. Tetra Pak and Lactogal claim that its new packaging solution, which expands the amount of paper and lowers the carbon footprint while ensuring food safety, can assist the industry in overcoming such challenges. In 2015, Tetra Pak released the Tetra Rex Plant-based package, suitable for cold chain distribution, which was the first package in the industry made fully from plant-based renewable materials. Tetra Pak has delivered around 6.5 billion of these packages around the world since then. Having been in development since 2022, following Tetra Pak and its partners' adoption of the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment's Design for Recyclability guidelines, the Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf carton achieves an impressive 90% renewable content milestone. Furthermore, it can be transported under ambient conditions. This achievement brings Tetra Pak closer to its ambition of developing a beverage carton made solely from responsibly sourced renewable or recycled materials, which would be fully recyclable and carbon neutral. The company is aiming to meet that ambition and commence industrial-scale production of the solution by 2025. José Capela, president of Lactogal, said: “Our collaboration with Tetra Pak centres on a shared belief that a more sustainable future is possible. Innovating together is a big part of that. We are both focused on an ambitious sustainability transformation and this new carton’s 33% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, together with its carbon neutral certification by the Carbon Trust, is a significant achievement towards this goal.” Ola Elmqvist, executive vice president of packaging solutions for Tetra Pak adds: “The development represents a critical marker in our longstanding work to design beverage cartons for recycling – something that is continuing to set the pace for the paperisation of packaging. By joining forces with Lactogal we’re now demonstrating that it’s possible to progress the sustainability of aseptic beverage cartons while securing food safety and enhancing food access.”