ULTRA PAC IS NAMED TO OLYMPIC VENDOR TEAM

ROSEANNE HARPER

ROGERS, Minn. -- Ultra Pac here said it has been selected as the sole supplier of box lunch containers for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.

The selection of the hinged, two-compartment Ultra Pac container was ultimately based on the container's environmental friendliness, said Charlie Ahern, Ultra Pac's sales manager for the Southeast region.

"This is different from being named an 'official Olympics' product, which costs money," he pointed out. "The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games wants this to be a 'green' Olympics, that is, as environmentally sensitive as possible. That's why they chose our product, which contains up to 80% post-consumer-recycled plastic. And then the product itself can be recycled again."

The committee will see that all recyclable products are pulled from trash bins and delivered daily to a local recycling company. "They have teams of people who will just be sorting trash in order to take out recyclable items, and there are a number of others. The committee will see a return because they'll sell them for scrap," Ahern said. The Ultra Pac lunch box that will be used is a hinged, two-compartment container that measures 7.5 by 10.5 inches and is 3.5 inches deep. Food will be purchased from a number of sources, supermarkets among them, Ahern said.

All Olympic athletes and Olympic event employees -- from cameramen to maintenance and security workers -- will eat their box lunches from Ultra Pac's containers. The company expects the total number of these particular boxes sold for the Olympics alone to exceed 1.5 million.