更环保的利乐枕设计，为环保而努力
不起眼的牛奶纸盒进入我们的生活如此之久，以至于我们很容易忘记，它在1952年首次出现时曾被视为一个奇迹。利乐(Tetra Pak)的技术让这家公司的瑞典创始家族的继承人汉斯•劳辛(Hans Rausing)成为了亿万富翁。汉斯•劳辛上周去世，享年93岁。
The Tetra Pak cartons, made from layers of paperboard and polyethylene, soon displaced glass bottles because they were far lighter and could easily be stacked and distributed. Its aseptic carton, with a layer of aluminium foil that allowed heat-treated milk to remain fresh, followed in 1961.
由多层纸板和聚乙烯制成的利乐纸盒，很快就取代了玻璃瓶，因为它们轻盈得多，而且易于堆叠和分销。1961年，利乐推出了无菌纸盒，其内附一层铝箔可以让经过热处理的牛奶保持新鲜。
But every technology has drawbacks and Rausing died at the moment when those of plastic are becoming distressingly obvious. Landfills are stuffed with bottles and cartons, and trillions of pieces of plastic float in the world’s oceans. What happens to the 189bn Tetra Pak containers made last year as they are discarded?
但每一项技术都有缺点，在塑料的缺点令人苦恼地显现出来的时候，劳辛离开了我们。垃圾填埋场堆满了瓶子和纸盒，天量的塑料碎片漂浮在世界各地的海洋中。去年生产的1890亿个利乐纸盒在被丢弃时发生了什么?
Carton makers such as Tetra Pak and SIG Combibloc of Germany are far from the only contributors to the ballooning volumes of packaging waste. In some ways, they are encouraging recycling. But the rise of the carton shows how complex and difficult is the environmental challenge.
利乐、德国SIG康美包(SIG Combibloc)等纸包装制造商远非导致包装垃圾数量激增的唯一原因。某种程度上，他们正在鼓励回收利用。但纸包装的兴起显示出环境挑战是多么复杂和困难。
The case for cartons is simple: they may be better than the alternatives. They are easy to transport and a study for German carton makers found that they have 78 per cent less climate impact than glass bottles. They also contain 75 per cent paper and only about 20 per cent plastic.
选择纸包装的理由很简单：它们可能比其他替代品更好。它们易于运输，而且一项针对德国纸包装制造商的研究发现，它们对气候造成的影响比玻璃瓶要小78%。而且它们的成分75%是纸，只有约20%是塑料。
When collected and taken back to a specialist mill, they are also fairly recyclable. Their various layers separate out into paper, plastic and aluminium fibres when pulped in liquid, allowing the paper fibre to be mixed with virgin wood pulp and turned into cardboard boxes, tissues and the like.
当被收集起来送回专门工厂时，它们也是比较容易循环再利用的。打成浆时，其各个分层可分离成纸、塑料和铝纤维，然后可将纸纤维与原木浆混合，制成纸板箱、纸巾等产品。
This is the good news; the rest is less hopeful. First, recycling is far from universal even in Europe, which has a better record than the US. Only 47 per cent of materials from the 37bn beverage cartons made for European countries in 2016 were recycled.
这是好消息;其他消息就没这么乐观了。首先，即便在回收做得比美国好的欧洲，纸包装的回收利用也远未达到普及的程度。2016年，在为欧洲国家生产的370亿个饮料纸盒中，只有47%的原料被循环利用。
Cartons are also prone to a broader paradox — as economies advance, people tend to recycle more but also to consume more. Croatia’s overall recycling rate for packaging in 2016 was 55 per cent, compared with Germany’s 71 per cent, but the average German generated four times as much packaging waste as the average Croatian.
使用纸包装还容易陷入一种更普遍的悖论——随着经济进步，人们往往会回收更多纸包装，但同时也会消费更多纸包装。2016年，克罗地亚对包装的总回收率为55%，德国为71%，但德国人均产生的包装垃圾数量是克罗地亚人均水平的4倍。
This is a frightening prospect on a global scale. McKinsey & Co, the consultancy firm, estimates that China will comprise 28 per cent of the global packaging market by 2022 and emerging economies such as Vietnam suffer from widespread dumping not only of plastic bottles but of cartons.
从全球范围看，这是一个可怕的前景。咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey & Co)估计，到2022年，中国将占据全球包装市场28%的份额，而越南等新兴经济体还要承受塑料瓶、纸包装等各种进口垃圾的危害。
Second, paperboard is easier to recycle than the plastic, or the 4 per cent aluminium content of aseptic cartons. In theory, the plastic and aluminium fibres that emerge from the soup of old cartons can be turned to other uses — the metal can become material for roofing tiles, while the polymer can be melted into pellets for gas heating or steam.
其次，纸板比塑料或无菌纸包装所含的4%的铝更容易回收。理论上讲，从旧纸包装中提取的塑料和铝纤维可以用于其他用途——铝可以用作屋面瓦的材料，而塑料可以熔化成颗粒，用于燃气供热或蒸汽。
In practice, this only happens patchily and, as one study put it, “complete recycling in the strict sense is currently notfeasiblefor beverage cartons”. A carton is carefully bonded and constructed, often with a plastic lid and a straw fixed to the side; what Tetra Pak has joined together is not easily put asunder.
在实践中，这种回收利用并不完全，正如一项研究指出的，“对于饮料纸包装，严格意义上的完全回收目前并不可行”。包装纸盒的制作经过了小心的粘合和构造，常常有一个塑料盖子以及一根固定在一侧的吸管;利乐压合在一起的包装材料并不容易拆解开。
Consumer consciousness of plastic waste is rising sharply, thanks to campaigns against ocean pollution. But people still like the convenience of cartons and they offer many benefits, including access to fresh milk and juice in countries without sophisticated supply chains and refrigeration.
得益于反对海洋污染的运动，消费者对塑料垃圾的环保意识正在大幅提升。但人们仍喜欢纸包装的便利性，它带来了许多好处，包括可以让没有复杂供应链和冷藏设施的国家的居民获得新鲜牛奶和果汁。
This means companies such as Tetra Pak need to do more to make their products not only useful but also sustainable. In the short term, that involves stronger links with recycling mills and waste companies to ensure that the containers they pump into the world are returned and reused.
这意味着利乐等公司需要做出更多努力，让它们的产品不仅好用，而且符合可持续发展。短期来看，这需要加强与回收工厂和废弃物处理公司的合作，以确保它们输送至世界各地的包装得到回收和再利用。
Tetra Pak last year agreed a partnership with Veolia, the French waste management group, to recycle more polymer and aluminium fibres from cartons for industrial use in Europe. Along with other carton makers, it is also increasing its use of recycled and environmentally approved raw materials, such as wood pulp from certified forests.
去年，利乐与法国废弃物管理公司威立雅(Veolia)达成合作协议，在欧洲回收更多纸包装中的塑料和铝纤维，用于工业用途。利乐还与其他纸包装制造商一道，正在增加使用再生和获得环保认证的原材料，比如来自认证森林的木浆。
In the long term, the company faces a huge technological challenge to get to what it says is its ultimate aim — to construct cartons entirely out of renewable materials, including recycled plastic. Cartons would then no longer require fresh supplies of polymer from oil and gas refineries.
从长远来看，利乐要实现其所称的最终目标——所有纸包装完全由可再生材料(包括再生塑料)制成——该公司面临着巨大的技术挑战。届时，纸包装将不再需要来自石油和天然气化工厂的新的塑料供应。
It soundsimprobablebut innovation in materials science was what originally enabled the milk carton. That also took a long time to perfect from the first idea of creating a tetrahedral paper carton in 1944 to the manufacture of aseptic containers 17 years later. As Hans Rausing’s father, Ruben, observed: “Doing something that nobody else has done before is actually quite hard.”
这听起来似乎不太可能，但正是材料科学的创新当初让牛奶纸包装成为可能。从生产一种四面体纸包装的想法首次在1944年出现，到17年后无菌纸包装的制成，这一过程也花了很长时间去完善。正如汉斯•劳辛的父亲鲁本•劳辛(Ruben Rausing)所言：“做别人没做过的事实际上是相当困难的。”
The multilayer carton turned out to be a far more useful invention than even the Rausings realised at the time. But, like plastic bottles and aluminium cans, it was imperfect. Making it greener is a worthwhile project.
多层纸包装已被证明是一项甚至比当时劳辛家族意识到的更有用的发明。但像塑料瓶和铝罐一样，它并非完美无缺。让它变得更环保是一项值得付出的事业。
