Siegwerk: Cooperation for better recyclability
Siegwerk has partnered with German startup Wildplastic and the Hamburg University of Technology (TU-Hamburg) aiming to increase the recyclability of plastic waste. One way to achieve this is by successfully deinking the collected waste before entering the recycling extrusion process.
In 2021, Wildplastic and the Institute of Circular Resource Engineering and Management (CREM) of TU-Hamburg started a cooperative research and development project, financed by the Investment and Development Bank of Hamburg (IFB) to study the feasibility of improving the quality of LDPE-recyclates from post-consumer sources. Evonik is supporting this project as a cooperative partner.
Providing deinking chemistry and knowledge
“We started to conduct research on deinking of post-consumer plastic waste with Wildplastic about one year ago. As a technical university, it is important to carry out meaningful research relevant to the real-world problem. From our project, we have learned that a successful circular economy only works by motivating all the stakeholders involved. Siegwerk as the producer of printing ink, can play an important role in this context since it brings the producer’s perspective to solve the problem in the beginning.” said Jinyang Guo from the Institute of Circular Resource Engineering and Management (CREM) from TU- Hamburg during a kick-off meeting between the partners in November 2022. Siegwerk is supporting Wildplastic in this initiative by providing the deinking chemistry and knowledge to enable the creation of clean recyclates.
