The Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC), owner of the Streets brand in Australia, has launched a collaboration with Seabin, developer of devices that collect floating waste from the sea, to monitor and reduce the environmental dispersion of ice cream packaging in the waters of Sydney Harbour. The initiative is based on data collected by Seabin’s smart units, devices capable of intercepting and classifying floating waste in marinas and urban coastal areas. Monitoring in Sydney Harbour shows that soft plastics account for a significant share of the collected materials (18.69%), second only to microplastics (54.77%). Among the recovered food wrappers, about 1% are from Streets ice cream packaging- a small percentage, but representing thousands of fragments dispersed in the marine environment.
The partnership aims to turn these data into concrete actions across the entire packaging lifecycle. TMICC will support waste prevention and removal activities, contribute to systematic monitoring of soft plastics via Seabin’s data platform, and promote transparent reporting of environmental results. Another goal is to better understand the pathways through which ice cream packaging becomes dispersed waste, in order to identify effective solutions both in packaging design and consumer behavior.
For TMICC, the agreement represents a step forward in defining its environmental strategy as an independent business, while for Seabin, the collaboration with an international brand strengthens the role of data in guiding policies to reduce packaging pollution. This convergence highlights how sustainable management of plastic materials is becoming an increasingly strategic issue for the food packaging sector.
Source: PKN Packaging News
