One of the prerequisites for achieving a truly circular economy is to transport relevant product, application and process information along the recycling value chain. The R-Cycle initiative, which will be presented at the upcoming K trade fair, is moving towards defining a global standard that will enable plastic products to find their way back home.

---

When we make a plastic product, and especially when we make packaging, there is increasing concern that the material should be "recyclable". And this is an advertisement that we can find on many labels: "100% recyclable packaging". However, for the closing of the cycle to be real and for a package to become a package again, it is necessary that we ourselves, who are the ones who manufacture packaging in the chain, have the capacity and availability of supply to integrate the material that we put on the street into our products.

How realistic is this goal? Let's take a polypropylene lid, for example. If I put it on the market and it comes back to me, it is possible that I can, at least to a percentage, reintegrate that same product into what I bring back to the market. However, the underlying question in this case is: what should we do to bring the product back home?

This is where traceability comes into play. For a product to flow through the chain and come full circle, it must be clear throughout its life cycle who this product is and where it should return to. In order to maintain the value of the product, it is important that those who collect and separate it are clear about what it is, and that those who process it or transform it into raw material again do not mix it with materials that make my product lose value. I want the lid to keep its identity, to maintain its value throughout the recycling process.

 

Information for recycling

Under this premise, saving the identity and communicating the identity of each plastic product throughout the recycling chain, the "digital product passport" technology was born. The digital passport is a way to provide all those involved in the recovery process with the information they need for the product to maintain its value.

In Europe, work has been underway on an initiative called "R-Cycle", which gives recycled plastic products this digital passport. The passport consists of three things: first, an ID number so that the product can be identified. Second, data that is recorded for this product. And third is a marking that assigns the ID number to the product. This can be done through different methods: for example, a barcode, a QR code or a digital watermark. "We are open to different marking technologies, and we are working with several suppliers and initiatives, such as the HolyGrial 2.0 digital watermark," says Dr. Benedikt Brenken, head of the R-Cycle initiative. "Our approach at R-Cycle is to capture and deliver data throughout the product lifecycle. Depending on the requirements, we can select different tagging technologies."

According to Brenken, the R-Cycle initiative works with GS1, an organization that develops open standards for processes across companies. Among these are barcodes, which allow products to be identified for global exchange. "From the beginning, we asked ourselves: what do we need most to achieve a circular economy? And the answer was: information. To achieve more accurate sorting and high quality of recycled plastic products, we need to provide information throughout the life cycle of each plastic product." Sharing this information requires a standard, and GS1 already has appropriate standards that can be adapted.

 

A common language

The initiative started by defining what kind of data should be collected within the passport. In principle, it is important to know what kind of materials are being used in the packaging and how it should be recycled. On the other hand, however, it is important to ensure that no data is stored that could reveal company secrets, such as recipes. And to build the standard, a partnership of companies with different profiles and different interests along the value chain has been created to size and protect the data that is relevant for each link.

The initial initiator of the idea was Reifenhäuser, the manufacturer of plastic film converting equipment. The company has already been working for several years to develop packaging technologies that can be easily recycled. However, during the process, a basic problem arose: what would be the use of making fully recyclable packaging if it were eventually incinerated for thermal recovery? Even in Germany, in the current waste sorting process, packaging that is recognized as recyclable is very limited. "The sorting is not accurate enough, and yet all the information that is needed to achieve better recycling is available in our machines and systems, and we already use it to control the process. Why then, shouldn't we be able to use this information across companies for recycling purposes?" asks Brenken. With this information it is possible to better sort waste and achieve a higher quality of recycled plastic, and this information can accompany every product manufactured.

For a digital passport to be robust and widely used, it is important to comply with certain aspects. First, it is important to use a common language. The initiative, as mentioned above, is working with GS1 and introducing standards such as GTIN and EPCIS, which are already established worldwide. On the other hand it should be accessible to all stakeholders. This is why it has been developed as an open standard initiative, with unrestricted access for all participants in the value chain.

It is also important that it can incorporate more and more data throughout the life of the product, adding information on relevant events. Data transfer should cross company boundaries and ensure the protection of proprietary information. The data that is shared should be selectable at the discretion of each participant.

 

Successful cases

There are already some successful application cases on the market. One example is bags produced in cooperation with ExxonMobil, which can be produced and recycled directly, and which, thanks to the information contained in the R-Cycle product passport, have been recycled back into packaging. "This information makes it possible to select bags and turn them back into raw material in the process," says Brenken.

Another application example is a metallized bag with a foil produced by BrücknerMaschinenbau. This metallized foil is fully recyclable, and it has been possible to convert it back into film.

There is also an example reported from China, where it has been possible to recover agricultural film thanks to the digital passport. In a cooperation project of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture with the GIZ, the German international cooperation agency, it has been possible to record which farmer applies which film to which field. "When the film is recovered, it is scanned again and a balance can be made of how much film has been used and how much was collected, which ensures that all film is recovered and collected again for recycling."

Importantly, any company in the world can join the initiative and implement the platform to capture recycling-relevant data on their products or packaging.

 

Digitization for sustainability

The information stored in the digital passport is useful beyond recycling. Brenkenes aware that it will take some time to implement recycling on a large scale and establish the necessary infrastructure. "In the meantime, however, we want to use the advantages of the digital passport. It can be used, for example, to determine the recyclability of a product. The data can be used to calculate the carbon footprint, or to optimize the process towards Industry 4.0." Applications are currently being discussed among several partners. More than 20 market-leading companies have already joined the R-Cycle community, and the consortium is working to further exploit the potential of the consigned information.

Brenken is emphatic about the value of information for recycling, and goes so far as to assert that the digital product passport is a prerequisite for the circular economy. "The circular economy does not work if information is not shared among members of the value chain. It is not enough to provide information about the product only at the end of the life cycle."

According to the expert, the connected machines within R-Cycle can obtain accurate information about the respective products from the digital passport, and supply their own data accordingly, adding value to downstream processors.

Finally, the manager emphasizes that with R-Cycle, the potential of digitalization for sustainability is being utilized, something that is also demanded by policy within the framework of the European Union's Circular Economy Action Plan.