Sustainable Plastics - September/October 2022 - 38

blow moulding
R-Cycle creates the basis for a closed-loop circular economy.
R-Cycle project
products
A passport
for packaging
Offi cially launched in June 2020,
R-cycle is a cross-company initiative
aiming to ensure the recyclability of
plastic packaging through a seamless
documentation of all recycling-relevant
packaging properties. These packaging
properties are recorded during
production and stored on a common
data platform - providing the data
needed to improve the sorting process at
the end of the life cycle. By Karen Laird.
S
ince kicking off in
2020, the R-Cycle initiative
- an initiative
of the four plastics
machinery manufacturers Arburg,
Brückner Maschinenbau,
Kautex Maschinenbau, and
Reifenhäuser as well as the Institute
for Plastics Processing at
RWTH Aachen University - has
made huge strides. Developed
to provide an open and globally
applicable traceability standard
for an automated data transfer
process, R-Cycle currently
has over 20 members and has
progressed to a stage in which
it is being tested and verified in
various pilot projects, with raw
material producers, packaging
manufacturers, brand owners,
wholesalers and retailers.
One of these pilots, entitled
" Smart digital watermark pack38
aging
in Blow Molding " , has been
launched by Kautex Maschinenbau,
in collaboration with the
Brazil-based raw material manufacturer
Braskem, German plastic
packaging manufacturer KautexTextron
and Dutch recycling specialist
Morssinkhoff Plastics. It is
Kautex' second R-Cycle pilot project,
and with it, the company aims
to make a further contribution to
the realization of a functional circular
economy through the development
of an R-Cycle solution
for as many consumer packaging
application areas as possible.
Within the scope of the project,
various diff erent containers
- 250ml beverage bottles, 1
litre cans for solid detergents,
3 litre bottles with handles for
household chemicals and 20 litre
canisters for chemicals- were
produced by extrusion blow
September/October 2022
moulding; all had a single-layer
wall made of PE. The bottle caps
were also made of polyethylene
or polypropylene. To improve the
recyclability of the packaging.
During
production,
cycling-relevant
all
reinformation,
including
the manufacturer,
the types of plastic used, the
proportion of recycled and
biobased material, and details
of the packaging's application in
the food or non-food sector was
collected in the form of a digital
product passport by the Kautex
blow moulding machine running
at the relevant customer's plant.
Each container bore a marking,
such as a QR code or a digital
watermark, to identify and read
this information in further processes
- up to the waste sorting
system. The codes can be read
on any smartphone using the
Digimarc app, for example.
The data was stored on
the R-Cycle server in the GS1
Global Tracing Standard - the
traceability technology behind
R-Cycle. As a result, all data
becomes immediately available
along the entire value chain.
A GS1 standard is a system
that connects a product with all
its vital data, enabling trackability
and electronic information sharing.
The GS1 system is the leading
global network for cross-industry
process development.
In this particular Kautex pilot
project, the digital product
passport took the form of a digital
watermark - invisible codes,
at least to the human eye that
extend over the entire surface
of the packaging label - linked
to the data in the R-Cycle database,
enabling identification
by waste sorting systems with
the appropriate recognition
technologies. The result is data-based
and more precise
waste sorting and purer fractions,
which, in turn, yield higher-quality
recyclates.
Manufacturers and processors
of plastic packaging also
benefit from data-optimized
production processes in terms
of process eff iciency, quality
and compliance with legal information
requirements.
The role of Kautex
Maschinenbau was the development
of the 'R-Connector' -
a data acquisition system that
acts as an interface between
the extrusion blow moulding
production system and the
cloud-based R-Cycle platform.
By integrating the R-Connector
into the machine control
systems supplied by Kautex
Maschinenbau, the relevant
production data is collected,
analysed, and uploaded directly
to the R-Cycle server, significantly
increasing production
eff iciency and transparency.
Unlike present-day waste
sorting processes, which cannot
distinguish reliably between
recyclable and non-recyclable
packaging, this technology allows
waste sorting facilities to
identify fully recyclable packaging
by using standard detection
technologies. Pure fractions
within the recycling process
that supply detailed information
on their exact composition are
the key to obtaining high-quality
recyclate for true recycling.
With this open and globally applicable
traceability standard,
that is finally possible.
by waste sorting systems with
Sustainable Plastics - September/October 2022

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