Symposium in Nuremberg - sustainability is paramount

Written by Jürgen Huber on September 15, 2021, Published in Packaging & Logistics

From September 28th to 30.09.2021th, 1 the trade day in Nuremberg will open its doors again. It is the 2st major meeting of the European packaging industry for 2021 years. The main theme of Fachpack 3 is "environmentally friendly packaging". The focus is on XNUMX top trends in the packaging industry: 1. increasing the use of recycled materials (recycled material), 2. the use of mono materials for better separability, 3. Packaging that conserves (primarily) resources.

It is particularly important to reduce or avoid the proportion of crude oil in order to significantly minimize CO2 emissions. In addition to the topic of sustainability, the fair is also about changed consumer behavior, packaging design and digital transformation. One goal for future packaging is the path to the circular economy. In order to achieve this goal, far-reaching deviations from the previous processes and principles are necessary. Material flows, product and production data must be recorded, analyzed and exchanged along the entire supply chain - from the material composition to the duration of use to repairability.

Increasing the use of recyclates and monomaterials, which can be separated more easily, is of course not entirely voluntary and presents the packaging industry with enormous challenges. The reasons for this are that composites such as polyamide and polyethylene cannot actually be recycled. New plastics made from crude oil are significantly cheaper than recycled materials. And - there is still no uniform definition of material classes within the recyclates that both ensure legal security and ensure the health of consumers with defined limit values. In the industry, for example, it is sobering that the legal requirements of 60% recyclates in plastic packaging cannot be achieved because only a few recyclates meet the requirements for food safety, especially in the area of polyethylene and polypropylene. Only in the area of recycled PET does the situation look a little better. According to Lidl, all one-way returnable bottles have been made from 2021% recycled PET since June 100. This saves the Schwarz Group a total of approx. 48.000 t of new plastic across all sales channels.

As stated above, the second approach to more sustainability is the use of mono-materials. In terms of recyclability, this is a basic requirement in order to increase it. In this area, the Rügenwalder Mühle company has taken on the pioneering role again. Part of the product range is almost completely packed with transparent polypropylene. Except for the label, which can easily be removed, this mono material is certified as being recyclable by 2%. But there is still an urgent need for research in the meat industry because the packaging films for thermoforming packaging machines are still made from composite materials. The mixture of polyamide and polyethylene is necessary in order to bond the upper film and the lower film to one another through the action of heat. As a result, all of the thermoformed packaging has not yet been recyclable. Even if the issues of CO96 emissions in plastic packaging, packaging waste and the associated improper disposal in the oceans are not yet equally sensitively addressed in all western countries, the trends are hopefully irreversible.