NEWS


Brief Round table addresses recycling News in


■ SCOTTISH Enterprise has informed O-I of an offer of an RSA grant to support its investment plan for machinery upgrades at its Alloa facility. The plan includes technology advancements to support improvements in light- weighting, in addition to upgrades to design and decoration capabilities to support growing customer needs to differentiate brands and packaging.


■ GLASS manufacturer Beatson Clark has secured up to £1.7 million from the Regional Growth Fund. The company hopes to use the funds to install a larger and more effi cient bottle forming machine and a bulk palletiser for packing glass products at its Rotherham plant. This is just part of a planned £12 million investment which will include a larger capacity furnace, with an expected impact on its activity in pharmaceuticals and brewing.


■ ACCORDING to the sixth annual Proforest report on the Chain of Custody (CoC) commitment made in 2007 by Alliance for Beverage Cartons & the Environment (ACE) members – Tetra Pak, Elopak and SIG Combibloc – 88% of wood fi bre purchased globally by these companies in 2012 was either FSC certifi ed fi bre or originated from FSC controlled wood. This is compared to 85% in 2011.


■ CLONDALKIN Flexible Packaging has completed a multi-million euro investment in two new Comexi F2 high-speed printing presses for its manufacturing locations at Flexoplast in Harlingen, the Netherlands and at Wentus in Höxter, Germany. The presses bring increased capacity, effi ciency and fl exibility as well as allowing customers to take advantage of the high quality printed fi lm laminates produced by Flexoplast and Wentus.


4 > packagingscotland


FLUMMOXED by waste fl ows? Mystifi ed by materials recycling? The recent conference of Recoup (RECycling Of Used Plastics), an independent expert on plastics recycling, unveiled a couple of initiatives aimed at clarifying this topic, both for consumers and package designers/specifi ers. Held in Peterborough in late September, the event brought together


organisations from


across the plastic supply, use and recycling chain, to discuss and debate the future of plastics recycling.


Announcements


included an updated edition of a document to assist product developers


with recyclability


(see “Design companion”, below) and a new initiative to help local authorities


communicate more


effectively with consumers about plastics recycling.


In his keynote speech Lord de Mauley announced support and fi nancial backing from Defra for a new Recoup initiative (as yet unnamed), intended to better engage consumers with recycling. Speaking


with Packaging


Scotland, Recoup CEO Stuart Foster refl ected on the progress made with plastics recycling in recent years. “If you’d asked me fi ve years ago, I’d have said there wasn’t enough infrastructure [to support plastics recycling]. But a lot of it has now been put in place by waste management companies.” The latest version of the Local Authorities


Plastic Collection


Survey, an annual document that Recoup helps put together and which has been going since 1994, shows that the UK now recycles around 58% of its plastic bottles, a relatively homogenous waste stream.


Plastic waste in the


category “pots, tubs and trays” - a less homogeneous stream - is more problematic and at present only around 28% of this waste is recycled. Less homogeneous waste tends to be a trickier proposition, and Recoup has led work looking at the different types of plastic materials present in such items, and how they might be recycled.


One material relatively easy to recycle is polypropylene. There are more and more packaging


Getting consumers more engaged with plastics recycling is the aim of Recoup’s Defra-funded project


success stories around it, says Foster. One example is the Dulux paint pots recently produced by RPC.


Sending the right messages With the technical side of recycling progressing steadily, Foster suggests the real blocking point at the moment is consumer engagement.


initiative hopes to


The Recoup tackle


this,


and will develop communications tools and guidance to provide support local authorities to help them deliver better and more consistent information.


One of the aims is to resolve areas of confusion in the way consumers are informed about


recycling.


Foster cites the


universal triangle symbol, with its accompanying number to denote different types of plastic polymer. Still in use by many local authorities, the symbol is “too confusing” he says, and doesn’t allow for the right materials to be recycled. Waste collection, waste sorting, product design - there are challenges to address in many different areas but Foster suggests the past decade has been a very successful one for the UK with respect to recycling, prompting optimism about the future.


“I think there’s a great opportunity for the UK to become a leader in the recycling fi eld,” he said.


Design companion


RECOUP’S guideline docu- ment for packaging tech- nologists and pack devel- opers


involved in plastic


packaging has been revised for the second time this year.


‘Recyclability By Design’ is one of RECOUP’s most im- portant documents, well re- garded throughout Europe, and even translated into Spanish. The existing ver- sion, released in June this year, was a refresh of the look and update of some of the content, including some


additional chapters and more relevant photographs. However the technical details, the recyclability matrices for each poly- mer, were not re-written. Recoup says it would not publish any review of these without major research, input and approval from both the recycling industry and the packaging industry. Recoup packaging technologist, Paul East, declared “The poly- mer recyclability tables are the most important and relevant part of the document, which is why we have spent some time talking to the most relevant people to ensure the information is current, informative and accurate.”


October-December 2013


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52