imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Hubweg 15 74939 Zuzenhausen, Germany phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 info@petpla.net EDITORIAL Kay Barton Heike Fischer Gabriele Kosmehl Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Anthony Withers WikiPETia. info petplanet@petpla.net MEDIA CONSULTANTS Martina Hirschmann hirschmann@petpla.net Johann Lange-Brock lange-brock@petpla.net phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 LAYOUT AND PREPRESS EXPRIM Werbeagentur | exprim.de Matthias Gaumann READER SERVICES Till Kretner reader@petpla.net PRINT Chroma Druck Eine Unternehmung der Limberg-Druck GmbH Danziger Platz 6 67059 Ludwigshafen, Germany WWW www.hbmedia.net | www.petpla.net PETplanet Insider ISSN 1438-9459 is published 10 times a year. This publication is sent to qualified subscribers (1-year subscription 149 EUR, 2-year subscription 289 EUR, Young professionals’ subscription 99 EUR. Magazines will be dispatched to you by airmail). Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Note: The fact that product names may not be identified as trademarks is not an indication that such names are not registered trademarks. 3 PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 No. 09/22 www.petpla.net Dear readers, On our current Editour, we visited many recyclers and found that the recycling rates for PET bottles within the packaging industry are very high. Of course, we don’t have a 100% cycle worldwide, but in whatever country in the world, the cycle is working, whether as a deposit system in some countries, or voluntary collection in Switzerland, for example, or as manual collection in emerging countries. The same applies to the polyolefin bottles. Where it doesn’t work at all is with multilayer packaging. As important as this is to the quality of the bottled product, multilayer packaging is not recyclable. Here the industry is producing a world full of litter with a vengeance. Collection and separation systems are plentiful, today’s technology can laboriously sort this packaging out of the trash, but in the end, at best, it goes to incineration. In emerging countries, it ends up in the environment more often than not. At the K fair, we will find many good approaches to packaging recycling, but no industrial solutions for multilayer packaging. Enzymatic recycling may offer a way forward - but only for PET - there are mealworms that eat plastics; then there are bioplastics from waste from the paper industry for packaging, such as from Tecnao, which can go in the compost bin, and so on. But the multilayer option is the cheapest for the industry because environmental pollution is not priced in. The association endofplasticwaste, representing the raw material and packaging industry, sweeps aside the problem thanks to its gigantic advertising budget. “The bad consumer just has to collect intelligently and then it will all work out” is the credo. Such problem-diverting measures by industry show that governments need to intervene as a matter of urgency. Politicians worldwide should only be promoting recyclable packaging in the sense of a closed cycle, they should release recycling materials for food packaging and should be setting binding quotas. Politicians must ban packaging that cannot be recycled or that can only be thermally recycled, or impose such high taxes on such material that it makes no economic sense to use it. The European Union’s circular economy package makes a start. From 2030 onwards, only plastic packaging that is one hundred percent recyclable will be allowed on the market. The international community has proved over and over that it can tackle environmental problems efficiently across continents. Against the will of the industry, it got the ozone hole and acid rain under control through bans and legal regulations. Why shouldn’t the same be done with packaging? I doubt whether banning plastic straws and mandating tethered caps will be significant or important enough steps to get us moving in the right direction. Yours, Alexander Büchler
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