In the "Circular Competence" interview series, the VDMA Printing and Paper Technology Association asks its member companies about their plans, solutions and challenges on the road to a circular economy. What can the industry do to minimise the ecological footprint of packaging and other printed products?
Dr Markus von Beyer, Head of Environmental, Health, Safety & Sustainability-(EHS&S) Management at LEONHARD KURZ Stiftung & Co. KG in Fürth, explains the environmental and sustainability strategies of the family-owned company.
Do you use recycling and waste avoidance concepts in your own production?
KURZ has long been concerned with waste reduction and recycling management. The less waste we produce, the less resources we use, the less material we have to buy and the less waste we have to dispose of. We also use solvents recovered in production for cleaning purposes and instead of natural gas for heat generation. And of course we implement the Commercial Waste Ordinance. It is in our own interest to collect waste by type: The worse the waste is sorted, the more expensive it is to dispose of.
What Circular Economy solutions do you offer your customers?
First of all, by way of background: KURZ is a system provider of decoration and functional solutions that are applied to a wide variety of substrates by hot and cold transfer, among other methods. We are active along the entire value chain, from the development of the coatings, which we apply µm-thin to carrier films, to the construction of the application machines and the provision of services.
Our major contribution to the Circular Economy is that our µm-thin decorative and functional coatings achieve maximum effect with minimum material input. Studies with institutes and recycling organisations prove that papers and packaging finished with our solutions cause no problems in established recycling processes. The same applies to plastic parts decorated with our film transfer processes. In technical approvals, we have proven this for finishing processes such as our InLine-Foiling or cold transfer. For trim strips and radiator grilles of modern vehicles, which are provided with decorative and functional layers by in-mould decoration (IMD), recycling is also guaranteed.
What effect does this have?
Visible surfaces of components made of recycled plastic can be decorated again in the IMD process to a high standard without any visual or functional disadvantages. KURZ decorations thus serve to enhance the value of recycled materials. In addition, we are pushing ahead with recycling solutions for our carrier films. They have them made from recycled PET bottles, which currently has a disadvantage as recycled material is more expensive than virgin material. However, as recycling rates for PET products increase and more and more countries introduce deposit systems for them, this could soon change. For solvents, binders and other raw materials, we are also looking for recycled or bio-based materials. Above all, however, we have been investing a lot of time and money for years in the development of our own recycling process for PET carrier films. Today, we can obtain fibre raw materials or chips for film production from it. We continue to research and develop intensively in order to establish a real material cycle for the films. At the same time, we are analysing the ecological footprint. If recycling were more energy and raw material intensive than the process with virgin material, nothing would be gained. We are concerned with sustainable solutions for the future, not green marketing. With regard to our production and recycling processes, this means, among other things, that they are carried out as decentrally as possible close to the customer in the sense of short distances.
How does the topic affect your research, development and cooperation with customers, brand owners as well as material suppliers?
Cooperation has been getting closer for years. Circular Economy requires that actors along the value chains and material cycles coordinate. Everyone must take into account the needs and requirements of all the others in their processes. And in order to form cycles out of previously linear processes, it is necessary to redefine interfaces. We need to know what our material suppliers do, how our customers' processes work and what needs to be taken into account with regard to functioning recycling processes. We are involved in associations, initiatives and platforms in order to exchange ideas at eye level with a wide range of players in the value chain, to share knowledge with them or to create design guidelines for recyclable products and packaging. The transformation towards the Circular Economy is an elaborate, communication and consultation-intensive process in which we systematically reduce our environmental footprint along the entire supply chain.
Is the demand for your Circular Competence growing more regionally - or globally?
That depends: Globally active brand manufacturers today have the same requirements everywhere. They push their sustainability strategies worldwide and make no local exceptions. But in some regions there are locally operating customers who are not yet so far advanced and have not yet closed their material cycles. However, since the Corona crisis at the latest, we have felt a shift in awareness towards sustainable action, driven by facts and figures instead of marketing platitudes. Customers demand proof, certificates and third party audited figures. This increases the effort - but in this case it is welcome because serious efforts become more credible.
Environmental protection is often regulatory driven. Are the framework conditions right for entering the Circular Economy?
The degree of regulation needed also depends on society. For example, recycling works in Switzerland without a deposit system, while the awareness of waste as a recyclable material is quite different in Asia. There, waste ends up in landfills or in rivers and oceans. In order to achieve climate and environmental goals, both legal requirements and individual and corporate responsibility are required. Environmental protection often causes initial costs, but then reduces ongoing costs through saved energy and resources. Regulations often provide the necessary impetus to overcome the cost hurdles at the beginning. For fair competitive conditions, internationally harmonised regulations are needed. Here in particular, there is still a lot to do on the way to the Circular Economy.
www.vdma.org
