Dow, HP and partners unite on pouch-to-pouch mechanical recycling, pilot digital product passports

01 Oct 2021 --- Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, a business unit of Dow, has delivered a “first-of-its-kind” pouch-to-pouch mechanical recycling concept enabled by a value chain partnership involving HP Indigo, Reifenhäuser, Cadel Deinking and Karlville.

The industry collaboration has created a  multi-stage process for recycling polyethylene (PE)-based barrier pouches into new high-quality PE pouches suitable for repeat recycling and helping to drive a circular economy for digitally printed pouches.

Starting with a PE-based barrier food pouch designed for recyclability, the project team uses mechanical recycling and deinking to create a high-quality dishwasher MDO-PE pouch containing 30% recycled content.

The EU Plastics Strategy requires all packaging to be recyclable or reusable in an economically viable way by 2030. Moreover, the EU’s recently introduced plastics tax imposes a €0.80/kg (US$0.93/kg) levy on unrecycled plastic packaging waste.

In a next step, the team is working on a digital product passport pilot, enabling recycling-relevant packaging properties to be recorded and making the pouch identifiable for recycling within post-consumer waste management.

Optimal recycling output
The high-quality PE pouch has required several steps in a coordinated process with each team member applying their experience and capabilities.

“The requirements for plastic packaging products have never been more complex than today,” notes Ralf Wiechmann, head of film innovation at Reifenhäuser. “And we have modified and enhanced our Reifenhäuser production lines to enable films and packages not just to be economical and functional, but to meet the vast demand for recyclable packaging based on mono-material structures.”Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics pouch-to-pouch mechanical recycling concept is enabled by a value chain partnership involving HP Indigo, Reifenhäuser, Cadel Deinking and Karlville.

“For this project, we’ve broadened our machinery expertise to co-extrude the new resins on our highly flexible EVO 9-layer blown film line and produce PE-based packaging films at fast line speeds. This project shows that we can successfully both produce recyclable packaging, according to Recyclass and CEFLEX guidelines and use recycled materials in high-value applications if we collaborate effectively along the value chain.”

“To create the new pouch, HP reverse-printed the recyclable MDO-PE film on the HP Indigo 25K Digital Press with the dishwasher pouch artwork to have it ready for lamination to the film using recycled resins at Dow’s Pack Studios,” adds Itai Shifriss, head of Indigo business supplies at HP.

“Thanks to Dow’s Pack Studios and a team of world-class scientists, we could apply our full expertise and testing capabilities to make our resins work in this proof of concept,” continues Laura Evangelio, senior technical service and development specialist at Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics.

“The first PE-rich pouch was designed for recyclability with up to 5% EVOH in the total structure for barrier functionality, and Dow’s innovative resins provided a remarkable stiffness-toughness balance, low-temperature sealability, adhesion to extruded barrier layers and excellent bubble stability.”

Solventless adhesive
For the second PE-based pouch, Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics uses a high-performing solventless adhesive, enabling the lamination of the MDO-PE film to the PE-film containing recycled resins from the first pouch.

“To produce the recycled PE resins for the second pouch, we used our deinking technology to achieve the best outcome,” says Pablo Cartagena, business development manager at Cadel Deinking.The project uses mechanical recycling and deinking to create a high-quality dishwasher MDO-PE pouch containing 30% recycled content.

“The deinking process is key because it effectively removes ink from the plastic surface to obtain a plastic with similar characteristics to the raw virgin material, which helps to provide high-quality pouch-to-pouch recycling.”

“The Karlville pouch machine is one with the most compact footprint on the market, designed for extremely low set-up waste and quick change-over, perfectly suitable for recyclable materials,” adds Gustavo Guzzi, EMEA sales manager at Karlville.

Closing the loop through traceability
As a further evolution of the project, the companies are working on adding digital traceability to the pouches in line with the cross-company R-Cycle initiative, which aims to develop an open and globally applicable traceability standard for environmentally sustainable plastic packaging.

The initiative aims to automatically record recycling-relevant packaging properties during production by providing a digital product passport and passing them on through the value chain. 

Usable packaging can then be identified in the recycling process using special markings, and sorted into single-type fractions, which is key to obtaining high-quality recyclates.

R-Cycle is being driven by several major stakeholders in the plastics industry, including Reifenhäuser’s technology contribution to the pouch-to-pouch concept.

“Dow is engaged in driving the adoption of PE-based packaging designed for recyclability, which works in recycling and recovers the value of the initial use as shown in this project,” concludes Jaroslaw Jelinek, global marketing manager for oriented PE technologies, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics.

“Through Pack Studios, Dow is contributing to industry-scale testing and production capabilities to accelerate the development of such projects globally. This announcement represents the latest in our efforts to address both climate change and plastic waste with our extended sustainability targets to protect the climate, stop the waste and close the loop.”

By Joshua Poole