Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics (P & SP), a business unit of Dow, HP Indigo, Cadel Deinking and Karlville carried out the feasibility study together with Reifenhäuser as part of a cooperation project. The multi-stage pouch-to-pouch recycling concept aims to recycle digitally printed barrier bags. According to the project partners, a recyclable PE-based food pouch is turned into a high-quality PE-MDO pouch for dishwasher tabs via recycling and deinking, which consists of 30 per cent recycled plastic and is recyclable again. A multi-stage process, for which all project partners have contributed their expertise, is required for this, they say. In the next step, the companies are working on making the bags digitally traceable. To do this, they say they are using R-Cycle, an initiative of an open and globally applicable traceability standard for plastic packaging. The aim is to record recycling-relevant data during production with the help of a digital product passport, which can then be passed on along the entire value chain.

 

More information: Video "Can a pouch be a pouch again?" (at YouTube)

 

Sources:

• Kunststoffe 11/2021
• Photo: © Dow