PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2016

PRODUCTS 39 PET planet insider Vol. 17 No. 04/16 www.petpla.net 8 m² footpr int . Cav i t y number reading. Up to 72,000 per hour. PreWatcher I I I – l ike no other. W W W . I N T R A V I S . C O M / P R E W A T C H E R Focus on sustainable labels, pouch materials and printing ink The Frosch Recyclate Initiative of Werner & Mertz has set goals for effective plastic recycling in 2016. The company aims to obtain reusable material from a previously untapped source and reprocess it into a high-quality material that could even be used in foodstuff packaging. Werner & Mertz brought to market more than three million Frosch cleaning product bottles, some of which are made from secondary raw materials from the Yellow Bag (rPET) and others of used plastic from the deposit bottle collection system. The mixture’s ratio is about 20% rPET to 80% used plastic. According to the company, there is much more potential to use PET from the Yellow Bag. With the help of high-performance sensor laser technology, the PET flakes are separated, washed and processed into a flawless reusable material which can completely replace new PET made from fresh crude oil in packaging. Since 2012 the ground-breaking system has been developed as part of the sustainability project known as the Frosch Recyclate Initiative. In other projects, harmless ingredients are replacing criti- cal substances in pigments (masterbatch) for bottle caps and developers are working on a recyclable label solution. The chal- lenge lies in developing a label which provides the consumer with all required information and remains on the packaging while the detergent is in use, but can be completely removed in the hot wash during recycling of PET flakes so that it cannot contaminate the reusable material flow. www.werner-mertz.de www.ganzeitlich-nachhaltig.de www.wmprof.com