MILKLAB, the family of plant-based and dairy milks made for baristas and coffee enthusiasts, has used its stand at the Melbourne International Coffee Exhibition (MICE) to successfully showcase a revolutionary sustainable building material made from recycled waste including long-life milk cartons and coffee cups.
The new-look MILKLAB Lane stand at MICE on 17-19 August incorporated exterior, hole-in-the-wall style cafes and coffee carts that encouraged guests to explore and discover the ‘laneways of MILKLAB’.
For the first time, MILKLAB’s stand was made with sustainable materials including saveBOARD – a low-carbon building material made from hard-to-recycle liquid paper board used in long-life milk and juice cartons.
MILKLAB worked closely with saveBOARD to create a circular economy solution for the walls of MILKLAB Lane by integrating milk carton packaging waste into the board products. “There are no additives such as glues, chemicals and adhesives in the boards; the plastic in the packaging is the glue, and the colour is created from the original consumer packaging.
“Each board saves 500 used beverage cartons from landfill, with each saveBOARD plant today capable of recycling 4 million kilograms of soft plastics and fibre every year at its facilities at Warragamba in Western Sydney and Hamilton in New Zealand.”
MILKLAB Marketing Manager Natalie Latimore says following the success of MILKLAB Lane at MICE there were plans to roll-out the sustainable stand at other trade events.
“Sustainability is important to MILKLAB, so we are committed to implementing sustainable practices in our products, our processes and our packaging,” she said. “We are excited to partner with saveBOARD to use upcycled milk carton packaging for the build of MILKLAB Lane to offer our customers an exciting and sustainable brand experience with a reduced environmental impact.”
saveBOARD Country Manager Chris Collimore says saveBOARD was a true solution to problematic waste management and the company was proud to partner with MILKLAB to showcase its products.
“We divert hard to recycle packaging waste from landfill and turn it into an aesthetically pleasing, functional and commercially sustainable building product,” he said. “We then can recycle that product again and again back into saveBOARD. Supporting saveBOARD really is a circular solution to waste.”
Earlier this year, saveBOARD opened its new Warragamba beverage carton manufacturing facility in partnership with Tetra Pak, one of the paper suppliers used in the cartons for MILKLAB’s range of barista milks.
Tetra Pak Marketing Director Jaymie Pagdato says: “We are incredibly proud of the ongoing partnership between Tetra Pak and saveBOARD, keeping valuable resources out of landfill, preserving our planet’s resources, and reducing waste to create sustainable building materials from used cartons for the local market. Through this collaboration, we are not only creating value through the life cycle of every carton, we are also contributing to a low-carbon, circular economy.”