Membership in sustainability initiatives
Our commitment to a world worth living in for future generations
R-Cycle
R-Cycle is the open and globally usable tracing standard along the life cycle of plastic packaging. The overall goal is to implement a practical solution, ensuring recyclability by seamless documentation of all recycling-relevant packaging properties based on established technologies. In the recycling process, packaging can thus be precisely identified in order to process the resulting recyclate into diverse and high-quality plastic products.
In collaboration with packaging manufacturers, brand owners, wholesalers, and retailers global identification numbers should be introduced and IoT gateways, the necessary server infrastructure and standardized formats for secure data exchange will be developed. Partners in this project are: Arburg, Kautex Maschinenbau, Reifenhäuser, Brückner Maschinenbau, EREMA, Kampf Schneid- und Wickeltechnik, MULTIVAC, STEINERT, the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) and GS1 Germany.
PRINTCYC
In March 2019 a value chain project initiative was launched by a group of companies under the acronym PRINTCYC (Printed PP films for mechanical recycling) to research and test ways to create circular economy solutions basing on post-industrial waste. Members of PRINTCYC: The machine suppliers Brückner Maschinenbau, Kiefel and PackSys Global, the film producer Profol, the ink manufacturers Huber Group and Siegwerk, the converters Constantia Flexibles and Wipak as well as the recycling specialist Erema.
The initiative is coordinated by akk innovation, an independent start-up company for sustainable innovation management in the plastics packaging industry. The specific target of the first two project phases was to understand the impact of different ink formulations on the mechanical PP and PE recycling process. Furthermore, the re-usability of PP and PE recyclates (rPP / rPE) made from printed post-industrial film waste was evaluated in cast film, blown film, compression moulding and thermoforming technologies as well as the biaxial stretching process. Now the team is contacting new, prospective value chain partners and other recycling initiatives for designing the next working package to contribute to a circular economy of printed PP and PE films.
