GERMANY: A continuous cycle for recycled plastic shampoo bottles

From materials supplied by Polifilm and Herma’s wash-offadhesive, schäfer-etiketten produced a PE label made entirely of post-consumer recycled material (PCR) from milk bottles. Even the masterbatch containing the white pigment is in PCR PE.

The label makes possible the closed-loop recycling of large quantities of plastic packaging and paves the way for the production of high-quality recycled PE. This promising project, nominated at the Plastics Recycling Awards Europe, is a world first. “It can substantially increase the recovery rate of household plastic packaging waste while improving the quality of the pellets produced during recycling,” says Dagmar Glatz, responsible for sustainable packaging for the drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt, who showed interest in the solution. In the autumn, the three partners received the German Packaging Prize for another PE label recycled from domestic refuse and industrial waste (50/50). Herma’s wash-off label adhesive (62Rpw), which allows labels to be washed off with out leaving any residue, made the difference in recovering high-purity pellets from shampoo bottles. “We simply have to combine these two innovations with intelligent sorting technology, for instance using invisible barcodes or fluorescent markers, to achieve a continuous cycle,” concluded Volker Hurth, the Cosmetics Key Account Manager for schäfer-etiketten.

Part of 648 issue – May 20. All rights reserved except agreement written by Emballage Digest or mention of the magazine