Green Packaging – Profitable Climate Protection

Let's take a trip into the countryside, into the peatlands to be precise. After the last ice age, peatlands began to form everywhere on land where water was abundant and filled cavities in the soil. Plants that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen sink to the bottom after dying in the water. The absence of air and the acidic water prevent plant residues from completely decomposing. Instead, the organic mass turns into peat. In this way, peatlands extract huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in the peatland. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), peatland accounts for just about three percent of the world's land area. Yet it stores nearly 550 billion tons of carbon – twice as much as all the forests on Earth combined. In total, peatlands bind a third of the carbon in the soil. This makes these special wetlands effective carbon sinks and thus an important ally in the fight against the climate crisis.

Draining peatlands to turn them into agricultural land destroys the natural function of binding carbon dioxide. When the plant-based carbon in the peat comes into contact with the oxygen in the air, the greenhouse gas CO2 is created, which escapes into the atmosphere, at a rate of an estimated two billion tons per year. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021, the peatland expert Hans Joosten warned: "Peatlands are climate bombs when dry." Joosten is now professor emeritus at the University of Greifswald. To slow climate change and meet the targets set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, it is therefore essential to retain the carbon in the peatlands by keeping it wet or rewetting it.

What does all of that have to do with ZF? The technology company is working on a pilot project that will help preserve peatlands and promote their sustainable management. This paludiculture is an innovative alternative to conventional agriculture on drained peatlands, which ensures farmers can earn a livelihood. In the case of the ZF project, this entails reed grass from the peatland, which is processed together with recycled paper into transport packaging for transmission components. The aim is to replace the conventional plastic transport packaging. But taking one step at a time.

Together with a new supplier, the interdisciplinary ZF team worked in the best sense of the ZF Way principles of passion, anticipation and accountability on the design and optimal material composition for the transport tray made of molded pulp. In September 2023, the first prototype was available in two different compositions. Two batches of 100 molded-pulp trays were each used as part of daily processes. "Basically, they worked and fulfilled 80-90 percent of the requirements, but there was still room for improvement with handling. We are convinced that we will be able to take a decision on series production once the results with the second prototype are in," says Dr. Burkhard Bogisch, who initiated and is responsible for the project. The second prototype will be tested with 200 sample trays again under real production conditions and can then go into series production in due course.

Added to the cost savings with procurement and disposal is the fact that the prices for reed grass have remained fairly stable for years. Such packaging is also independent of rising CO2 and plastic levies. "Compared to the transport trays made of PET, we have a significant cost saving for the molded-pulp trays in addition to the ecological advantage," says a delighted Bogisch.

With the amount of in-house transport packaging that ZF uses throughout the Group, the potential of molded-pulp trays for cutting costs and boosting climate protection is huge. It will be even greater if it is possible to include the transport packaging from suppliers to ZF and from ZF to its customers.