Environment

As part of its Circular Economy Package, the European Commission has proposed challenging targets for the plastics industry. By 2025, 55% of plastic packaging waste must be prepared for re-use and recycling. The industry recognises that a business as usual approach will not meet this target. Fresh approaches and close collaboration across the…

At the exhibition SPS IPC Drives (November 22-24, 2016), in Nuremberg, Moog Industrial Group released a new family of fan-cooled brushless servo motors, further extending its broad selection of high performance motors. The design of fan-cooled brushless servo motors offers additional torque to accelerate and...

IdentiPlast - the international conference on collection, sorting and recycling of plastics - provides the world’s most comprehensive platform on the exchange of know-how between the plastics industry, regulators, academia and waste management practitioners from around the globe. The next edition’s conference will be held on...

The 22 November at the Research centre of the CNR in Pisa saw the conclusion of the project entitled “Leguval: Valorisation of legume co-products and by-products for package application and energy production from biomass”, as part of the seventh framework programme (FP7) supported by the European Commission. The project as well as involving the…

A new collaboration between the Corepla consortium and the Carpi consortium to facilitate the collection of plastic packaging waste from private commercial and industrial sites: this is the subject of an agreement between Corepla and the Carpi consortium for plastics recycling, whose aim is to implement, throughout Italy, the network of...

Italy is one of the top 5 EU countries when it comes to recycling. This result is the fruit of in-depth research undertaken in 2003 by Corepla (the Italian consortium for the collection and recycling of plastic packages) for investment in R&D, recycling-oriented production, and reuse of materials, and of a system that is increasingly efficient…

Borealis, a leading provider of innovative solutions in the fields of polyolefins, base chemicals and fertilizers, announces today that it has fully acquired the German plastics recyclers mtm plastics and mtm compact. Based in Niedergebra, Germany, mtm plastics is regarded as a technology leader in the recycling of mixed post-consumer plastic…

Materials manufacturer Covestro has once again received “Gold” certification from the international rating agency EcoVadis in recognition of its achievements in sustainability. In the recent survey, the company even improved its standing significantly and is now among the top two percent in the global ranking of 25,000 companies...

Petcore Europe - in collaboration with Procter & Gamble - brought together 100 participants from the PET industry, research facilities and the media for its first “Tracer Workshop” in Brussels. The event gave an overview on current active tracer projects and intended to stimulate a cross-industry discussion on how to harmonise the use of...

What do we know about marine litter? What policies are being implemented to prevent marine litter and create a circular economy? What is the role of the plastics industry in reducing marine litter? These and other equally challenging questions were on the agenda of PolyTalk 2016, a two day conference organised by PlasticsEurope in Brussels on...

The German plastics packaging association (Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen) recently participated in an extensive survey on the image of plastics in Germany which has revealed pleasing results for the material EPS airpop. The survey was carried out by RiQuesta target-group research...

There is good news on plastic recycling in Europe. In 2014, 7.7 million tons of plastic waste was collected (compared with 6.6 million in 2012), of which 69.2% was sent for recycling or re-used to generate energy. This, in short, is what emerged from the annual report published by PlasticsEurope and Epro...

On December 2 the European Commission published its long awaited circular economy package, following the withdrawal of a previous proposal at the beginning of 2015. When withdrawing the previous proposal, the European Commission promised that it would deliver a “more ambitious” proposal before the end of 2015...

On November 26 Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience) announced that it is extending its sponsorship agreement with Solar Impulse to the end of 2018, as the solar-powered airplane prepares to complete its journey round the world in 2016. Covestro has been a Solar Impulse project partner since 2010 and also its official technical...

The results of European Bioplastics’ annual market data update, presented at the last European Bioplastics Conference in Berlin, confirm the positive growth trend of the global bioplastics industry. “The market is predicted to grow by more than 350 percent in the mid-term”, says François de Bie, chairman of European Bioplastics...

The equivalent of 66 billion 1.5-litre PET bottles were collected and recycled in 2014, representing 57% of bottles and containers placed in the market. This conclusion comes from a report carried out by PCI PET Packaging Resin & Recycling for Petcore Europe from a Europe-wide survey among actors involved in the collection, sorting and…

The city council of Rotterdam is currently examining the PlasticRoad project, that makes use of prefabricated modules entirely made of recycled plastic (mainly obtained from post consumer bottles) to replace...

Plastics suppliers are being urged by the European Plastics Distributors Association (EPDA) to ensure they are compliant with the latest legislation for restricted substances, as the deadline approaches for SMEs to register existing chemicals used in production processes.

Radici Novacips, head company of the RadiciGroup Plastics Business Area, has chalked up another important achievement in sustainability: the company has developed and published an EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) for its Heramid “post industrial” PA6 and PA6.6 engineering plastics and an EPD for its polyamide scrap recovery service...

This is the slogan of the recent communication campaign launched by Pro.mo, and it is a message substantiated by the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) comparative scientific study of disposable tableware, published on July 9 by the Group of disposable plastic tableware manufacturers, which is part of Unionplast...