Clariant has joined forces with Beiersdorf, Siegwerk and Borealis to develop a truly circular packaging concept for personal care products.
The ‘Design4Circularity’ concept centres on a colourless polyolefin bottle with 100% post-consumer recyclate (PCR) content, full-body sleeved in a printed, deinkable shrink sleeve.
All materials are technically fully recyclable with the potential to be recovered and used for the same high-value application.
Each company involved in the project brings different techniques to the party. Clariant's involvement includes performance additives to enhance and maintain PCR quality through multiple recycling cycles without downgrading.
Beiersdorf, which owns brands like Nivea and Eucerin, offers sleeve packaging application quality & design; sorting trials at recovery facility; push design for circularity initiatives, evaluation of recyclability and PCR material safety evaluation.
Borealis offers advanced mechanical recycling technology Borcycle M, supplying high quality PCR material for bottles while Siegwerk is providing deinking technology know-how and suitable printing inks for shrink sleeve application.
The collaboration is targeting the achievement of truly circular packaging by incorporating full life cycle thinking in each development step, to create a new standard for the industry.
Circular packaging supports reduced plastic waste, less use of new/virgin plastic material, and reduced climate impact, which are critical challenges facing our planet, the companies said.
Clariant chief technology and sustainability officer Richard Haldimann added: “This collaboration was possible because all participants are dedicated to circular economy, with company-wide programmes and holistic understanding of the systems involved.
“Achieving circularity needs a complete shift in designing product packaging and packaging raw materials, considering sortability, recycling and packaging end-of-life.”
First sorting trials in existing recycling infrastructure proved the sortability of the full body sleeved HDPE bottle, achieving a high recovery of the bottle’s material.
Additionally, the project team conducted trials with full body sleeved, transparent PET bottles and achieved similar results.
Further advancements in sorting technology are needed to achieve the ultimate goal of circular economy to give colourless bottles a second life back in colourless applications retaining their highest value.
Technologies such as digital watermarking or artificial intelligence could help such sustainability goals to be reached.
