Procter & Gamble's new packaging is pretty sweet. Literally

Just read where consumer goods company Procter & Gamble is planning to use plastic made out of sugarcane for certain products in its beauty and grooming product lines. According to the post over at sustainability issues Web site 2Sustain, the new packaging -- which is 100 percent recyclable -- will get a test over the next two years. The first products to be wrapped up in all this sweetness will be available in 2011.

According to the company, the packaging is created by transforming sugarcane into high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. The good thing about this sort of plastic is that it is already accommodated by existing municipal recycling facilities. The example of Dell, which is experimenting with bamboo packaging, illustrates why this is so important: If people don't know whether something or not can be/should be recycled, they won't recycle. What's more, the town might/could refuse to take it.

The plastic being used by Procter & Gamble will be sourced from a company called Braskem, which makes the material out of sustainably grown sugarcane from Brazil.

SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das recently looked at a few greener options for protecting packages:

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Here are some other innovative experiments in sustainable packaging:

• In green packaging, little things mean a lot
• Coca-Cola offers example of focused sustainability
• PepsiCo practices performance with a purpose in sustainability push

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com