A recycling initiative meriting reflection

Siegwerk (producer of inks and coatings for packaging and labels), Greiner and Krones have set up a partnership with the aim of demonstrating the possibility of recycling PP and PS containers printed in colour or with in-mould labels.

The initiative has shown that it is possible to effectively deink and transform rigid containers into high-quality white recycled materials, without altering the formulation of the ink or the print design, also thanks to the technological evolution of recycling plant. The result has been achieved using hot caustic washing, a standard process adopted for recycling PET bottles and increasingly widespread also in recycling plant that treat flows of rigid materials (polyolefins and PS).

It serves as a call to review and update the deinking of packaging guidelines, therefore, and an invitation to adopt the DIN SPEC 91496 test standards, in line with the position paper published recently by EuPIA on the treatment of plastic packaging waste.