Product Spotlight – June

According to Kermit, it’s not easy being green. This may have been true for that web toed amphibian, but for us at Genpak, it is a can of corn (pardon the pun). Our Harvest Collection products are the industry benchmark for top quality, alternative material food service packaging. Whether they are referred to as green packaging, eco-friendly packaging or one of the many other earthy monikers out there, one thing is certain: You will get the best quality product available on the market today.

All Harvest Collection products are made right here in the USA. This fact must be made very clear. We were recently challenged at a restaurant industry trade show by a skeptical customer. They had done research and came to the conclusion that all “eco-friendly” food service packaging was imported from the far east. It certainly is true that many products other “manufacturing” companies offer are imports that need to take that long, expensive, gas guzzling boat ride across the Pacific Ocean. But rest assured, our Harvest Collection products are made at our Middletown, NY facility. Our Carthage, TX facility makes our Harvest cups. The raw material resin is also a domestic product.

Now that you know where these products are made, we can talk about what they are made of. Basically, it is corn (now you get the can of corn pun earlier). Specifically a polylactic acid (PLA) blend. I won’t bore you with the details of PLA composition. You can do an internet search which will provide a plethora of sites describing everything you ever wanted to know about it. Sometimes however, we are asked if it is GMO free. The answer is, there is no trace of GMO in our finished product. Now that is not to say the corn was not a GMO product. I think it’s safe to say that it was. However, to put this whole GMO thing into perspective, the cotton shirt and skivvies you are wearing, the corn flakes you had for breakfast and the seedless watermelon and grapes you enjoyed for lunch are all GMO products. Also, the corn used to produce PLA resins is not the kind of corn used to feed humans.

Harvest Collection products look and feel like top-of-the-line traditional plastic products. They are cut resistant, won’t absorb liquids or transfer any sort of weird sugary flavor into your food. When the products are removed from their bags, they won’t splinter and fall apart or become brittle and chalky like other alternative material products.

Harvest Collection food service packaging may be used for a variety of applications ranging from cold to warm foods up to 140° F. Wet and dry salads, sandwich & wraps, desserts, anything on a bun, well you get the idea. The list is as endless as your culinary imagination.

Now, what do you do with these products once you or your customer has used them. Well you have choices. The ultimate choice would be to find a professionally managed composter (not your backyard compost heap) that accepts food grade materials. If this is the case, the composter will turn our products into compost within 90 days. Pretty cool when you think about it. The raw materials came from the ground in the form of corn, and will be returned to the ground in the form of useful compost.

If you don’t have a composter nearby or your municipality has no organics diversion program in place, your only other choice is to properly dispose of the products into your normal trash.

So let’s recap then.

• Made in the USA (NY & TX)
• Made from an annually renewable resource (corn)
• Compostable
• Wide range of applications

What are you waiting for? If you have or are considering alternative materials for your food packaging, give us a call. We’d be glad to send you written information or free samples to test.