Starlinger, Vienna, Austria, has for the third time in a row been shortlisted for the Plastics Recycling Awards Europe. This year, the company enters the race with a holistic concept entitled “circular packaging”, which seeks to end unnecessary waste in the product life cycle of bulk bags made from polypropylene fabric.

With its revolutionary circular packaging concept, Starlinger aims to end this unnecessary waste of raw materials and create a circular economy in which discarded bulk bags become bulk bags once again. This concept is unique in so far as it represents a holistic approach that involves and documents various stages of the bulk bag’s life cycle such as manufacturing, usage, recovery, washing, and recycling.

The challenge in the recycling of bulk bags is that they come in different forms: with or without polyethylene liner, coated or uncoated, and with loops and seams consisting of different kinds of plastic. Therefore, the first step in creating a circular economy for bulk bags is ‘design for recycling’; this means that the big bags are designed in such a way that they can easily be recycled and processed into high-quality regranulate. The second important step is creating a material passport in which the entire life cycle of the bulk bags is documented, from the first filling and the filled product up to the materials used in bulk bag’s production. This traceability facilitates collection and reprocessing and thus increases the quality of the material to be recycled.

In cooperation with two leading European-based bulk bag manufacturers, Louis Blockx and LC Packaging, Starlinger has simulated this closed loop and produced new bulk bags with a high content of recycled PP. Tests show that these ‘rPP’ bags show the same quality as bulk bags made from virgin material in terms of tensile strength, weight, and safety factor. These promising results make Starlinger a strong contender for this year’s Plastics Recycling Awards Europe. The award winners will be announced on 26 March, during the second day of the Plastics Recycling Show Europe taking place 25-26 March at the RAI Amsterdam, where Starlinger will be exhibiting on Stand E23 in Hall 7. www.starlinger.com

 

Starlinger rPP bulk bags in front of one of the company’s recoSTAR DYNAMIC recycling lines and, below, one of its rPP bags filled with rPP flakes

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