Conservation of resources
Recycling plastics by type
With the arburgGreenworld program, Arburg is committed to the circular economy and resource conservation. Together with renowned partners, the company is working on innovative technologies for a closed-loop circular economy, among other things.
This includes the "HolyGrail2.0" project for sorting plastic packaging by type using digital watermarks. The project recently entered the next round and has been driven forward since September 2020 under the auspices of the European Brands Association AIM. Arburg is the only manufacturer of injection moulding machines among the more than 85 companies and organizations along the entire value chain.
"During the pilot project phase of HolyGrail, we used the example of IML cups made of mono-material to show that the technology with digital watermarks works excellently in principle," says Bertram Stern, Packaging and Circular Economy Manager at Arburg. Arburg is involved in various working groups in the Europe-wide project, which started in September 2020 and is due to be completed in summer 2022. The Brussels-based association AIM is coordinating the activities in line with current EU legislation.
Once a packaging concept has been developed, the plan is to start the semi-industrial test phase in spring 2021. EU legislation stipulates that all plastic packaging across Europe must be reusable, easily recyclable or compostable by 2030. The reuse and recycling rate should be 60 percent.
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