Where Is Secondary Packaging Going?

The key to more sustainable primary and secondary packaging involves two major approaches: recycle and reduce. The first requires that packaging materials are kept in constant circulation, being continuously reused. The second entails finding many different ways of using less and less packaging material in order to save on resources and avoid waste.

“The greatest challenge for us is the processability of the packaging materials,” said Karl-Heinz Klumpe, packaging product manager for KHS in Kleve, Germany. “Shrink film made of recycled plastic demonstrates very different shrinking properties versus film made of new material. As an engineering company, we can’t provide all the answers ourselves but instead have to coordinate closely with the film manufacturers.”

To this end, KHS is staging a number of workshops this year. These aim to find out how the percentage of recyclate in film — as stipulated by the new German Packaging Law, for example — can be increased.

“You make a few changes to the chemicals or recipe of your film and we adjust the air flow or temperature accordingly,” said Klumpe. “Providing that there’s a standard of quality which is accepted by the big bottlers’ marketing departments, of course. With film made of 100% recyclate, the shrink results aren’t yet satisfactory. Together we still have to work out how to close the gap here between recycling requirements on the one hand and the demand for packs of ever-increasing quality on the other.”    READ FULL ARTICLE