Truck and Track Autumn 2021

www.truckandtrack.com Autumn 2021 Truck and Track 57 SAFETY & SECURITY materials. We see terms such as biodegradable and compostable, bio-based and biopolymer. All these terms have their own technical definitions, but it is baffling for the consumer. To address the first two; biodegradable and compostable. These are highly unlikely to be made into security seals. By their nature they are very short-term-use materials that can produce garbage, garden, and food waste sacks. Bio-based and bioplastics are made from renewable biomass materials such as the pulp residue from the harvest and processing of sugarcane and the like. This sounds nice and natural, but it doesn’t mean you can throw it onto your compost heap and let it decompose, it won’t. Unisto has launched a range of seals moulded from minimum 94% bio-based polyethylene material. It is environmentally friendly in so much as it uses up to just 6% of petrochemical derived ethylene in its production, thus potentially leaving that oil in the ground. In all respects, the polymerized ethylene (PE) has the same properties as that derived from oil, so can be recycled but cannot be composted either domestically or industrially using heat and pressure. There is a type of degradable material that is of concern to environmentalists and that is oxo-biodegradable plastic. This plastic uses metal salt additives to speed the degradation process and is not considered compostable according to international standards. It is widely feared that the polymer breaks-up into harmful microplastics. A ban on this type of biodegradable material is likely in future. Other biomaterials includecornstarch, polylacticacid (PLA) from sugars in corn starch or sugarcane and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) amicrobial by product that can be used to replace plastics like styrene and polystyrene. These materials do biodegrade over time, but the timescale is still quite long. Bioplastics are taking us in the right direction by avoiding petrochemicals, however they are not a complete solution. If we can’t handle the enduring plastic waste we produce now producing more seems unlikely to be of benefit without an engrained culture in society to recycle. Carbonfootprint reductionandthecirculareconomy Reusable electronic seals have been in the market since 1985, pioneered by Encrypta Electronics and inventor and Bletchley Park codebreaker Gil Hayward (1917-2011). Unisto acquired Encrypta in 2002 and has developed the two reusable truck seals, C2K and Manta into rugged, long service security devices that provide up to 35,000 sealing events in their lifetime. The long life and reliability of these two products has brought convenience and efficiency to security sealing, as the seal lives on the trailer or vehicle door and generates a random number each time it is closed. A brightly lit numeric LED seal display is visible in all light conditions with the seal number being recorded on the manifest or photographed and emailed to the destination site to check on arrival. C2K manufacture generates a total of 9.39kg and Manta 16.74kg of carbon dioxide per unit. In replacing up to 35,000 plastic seals, removes a footprint of about 245kg CO 2 , for that quantity, from the atmosphere (circa 7kg per 1,000 plastic seals) per unit fitted. Unisto’s circular economy vision is for reusable seals to be returned, repaired, and replaced ensuring that Fleet and Security Managers always have working seals in service and pay only for the sealings they need. Spreading reusable seal use from trucks to many other applications, capturing the data in the cloud for super-fast analysis by AI software and providing real-time loss prevention alerts, managed by exception only. It all sounds like a pipedream, although it is starting to take shape, and when it does the environmental benefit in replacing the plastic seal will be profound. www.unisto.co.uk