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l ltextile packaging recycling
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Songwong believes this percentage
can be increased to 80% without com-
promising quality.
‘I am very well aware that our industry
was only focussed on more and more
growth for the last 70 years or so,’
Keiser admits. At Songwon, this has
changed. ‘We have adopted a top-
down approach to start making poly-
olefins suitable for recycling. We want
the circular economy to be more than
an afterthought,’ he explains.
‘First of all, we have to think about
how we manufacture plastics. We pro-
pose keeping not only the use but
also the post-consumer phase in mind
at the design phase. With sustainabili-
ty at the core of it.’
The melt flow index, the measure of
how many grams of a polymer flow
through the die in ten minutes, is key
to designing products that are made
to be recycled. ‘If you want to avoid
breakdown of plastics to maximise
second-life applications, you have
to add enough additives to make
sure the plastic survives the second
cycle,’ Keiser argues. ‘Don’t try to
rescue whatever you can when the
material comes back into the loop.’
Adding additives at the production
stage can be done at a very small cost,
according to Keiser. ‘Maybe a few cents
per batch: you won’t notice it.’ It’s a
simple and straightforward approach.
Who controls the
narrative?
Another issue that has to be
addressed is how materials, especially
plastics, as well as waste management
in general are frequently misrepre-
sented by environmental groups. This
‘bad press’ has had a remarkable
effect on young people in particular,
Keiser observes.
He tells delegates that a couple of
weeks earlier his nine-year old daugh-
ter came home from school upset.
‘She plainly told me: “Daddy, plastics
are bad!” You and I may know that the
scenario is not as dramatic as ‘planet
versus plastic’ – but it’s easy for kids
to believe so. We have to make sure
that negative image is corrected,’
Keiser stresses.
A familiar issue is that you rarely
hear recyclers or engineers being
included in the public debate about
waste. ‘It’s mainly celebrities and
politicians. The problem is, they
can only give simple answers to com-
plicated questions,’ Keiser argues.
‘We are the ones with the information
and knowledge. It’s time we took a
stand so we can control our own nar-
rative.’
The sustainability specialist emphasis-
es: ‘We don’t need lofty promises for
tomorrow. We need real and relevant
actions today.’
Fixing the imbalance
Victor Sanz, general manager of paper
and packaging producer Saica Natur,
nods in agreement at Kaiser’s words.
‘Plastics aren’t necessarily the problem.
The real issue is the imbalance
between plastics production and inno-
vation, specifically sustainable design
and recyclability.’ That’s why Saica is all
about accelerating circular plastics,
Sanz insists.
‘We established a third site for plastics
recycling last year and we are simplify-
ing our polymers. We also provide an
annual grant to the winner of our
Saica Sustainable Solutions competi-
tion.’ The latter was created in 2013 in
collaboration with the Technical
University of Zaragoza. In 2015, Saica
established another partnership with
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