Schindellegi, 07.07.2020 – Increased demand for plastics packaging to protect our personal health and to prevent the coronavirus from spreading further, combined with a collapse in oil prices, resulted in cheaper to produce virgin plastic. Given this, it is now more important than ever to consider the overarching and common goal of creating a truly sustainable and circular economy.
Replacing non-recyclable frozen food trays with PET monomaterial structures, while increasing use of RPET
Many indispensable products are partly or entirely made of plastics. We support our customers in switching to more sustainable solutions via our dedicated SUKANO® RPET Masterbatch Portfolio.
“With our newly formulated SUKANO® Impact Modifier Portfolio, customers have a recyclable alternative at hand to replace products made of, for instance, amorphous Copolyester or GAG film structures, while enjoying the benefits that go beyond mechanical properties modification.” states Alessandra Funcia, Head of Marketing at Sukano and Chairwoman at the Working Group Functional and Opaque PET packaging at PETCore.
Improved durability and toughness, enhanced impact resistance, higher RPET content, shatter resistance – and all without a loss in transparency. It also allows safe packaging for consumer by reducing sharp edges and it leads to less shards, avoiding contamination. This helps improve productivity and yields by avoiding line interruptions and generating more first quality parts. Our customers can also testify that these high-performance Masterbatches provide additional functionality as a cutting aid, improving die cutting in production, speeding up the lines and avoiding any cross-contamination potential by splinters. “All without compromises: our latest development - the SUKANO® Impact Modifier Portfolio - allows transparent trays for cold, flash frozen and room temperature trays, to be fully recyclable,” reinforces Michael Kirch, Global Head of R&D
Beyond the impact modifier masterbatch, Sukano is helping to facilitate the replacement of end applications made from non-recyclable or less sustainable materials into applications made from PET via an innovative RPET Product Portfolio.
SUKANO® Melt Enhancer Masterbatches makes multiple recycling circles possible. These masterbatches improve processing stability and mechanical performance, thus enabling the use of higher amounts of recycled PET for high-quality applications. Since different end applications require different product performances – and processing technology is not uniform at every industrial center – our specialists designed a portfolio that enable the selection of the most accurate and appropriate chemistry to allow you enjoy the greatest value over benefit ratio.
Additionally, to allow material to be reused, detectability of the postconsumer material is crucial. This enables sorting at dedicated facilities, ensuring the material can go back into the recycling stream. Sukano provides brand owners and convertors a formulated NIR detectable colors portfolio, which has been certified by sorting machine technology leaders in France, Tomra and Pellenc. These masterbatches allow sorting and recycling of any colored packaging or other end applications according to the COTREP design guidelines, giving producers the freedom in aesthetics and creativity, while still supporting recycling goals.
When it comes to sustainability, circularity plays a decisive role and therewith a sophisticated material selection is crucial to give plastic applications a second life opportunity.
If we were to ban all plastics packaging and replace it by the alternatives – glass, metal, wood – the amount of energy required for that would explode.
PET Plastic packaging are functional and precious resources. And, when considering the recyclability of plastics, PET is champion. Recycling one ton of plastics can avoid the emission of 2.5 tons of CO2 versus production from virgin materials, and 2.7 ton of CO2 emissions if incinerated. PET recycling saves 83% of energy and 70% of CO2 emissions compared to PET produced from virgin materials.
As circularity makes a major contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and decoupling economic growth from resource use, medium to long-term targets should include investment in innovative recycling infrastructures to assure different waste streams are converted into valuable resources. It must be the work of all of us to recover them, recycle them and keep the materials into the loop.
Join the journey and be part of the solution. At Sukano #wearepartofthesolution.
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