IFAT 2018 I Recycling at IFAT

The stricter waste imports to China, the new commercial waste regulation, and the coming packaging Act of 2019 are making the recycling industry busy.
Peter Kurth, Chairman, BDE
"In both new regulations, the quotas will be raised. This means that in the future, significantly more quantities will have to be collected separately, and processed in high quality. And we’ll also succeed in doing that, but what’s crucial now is that these quantities are returned to production. Just collecting more, and sorting more, is not enough. We need more closed-loop business - that is, cycles that are self-contained.“
Only in this way can the environment and resources be spared sustainably. The IFAT recycling exhibitors are aware of this.
Michael Schneider, Spokesman Remondis, GmbH and Co. KG
"We face the challenge of having to spend more money - not just as a company, but as an industry in general - so as to ensure the quality of the raw materials we extract from the waste stream.
The only veritable source that we have here in Germany is our waste stream.
All the raw materials that are brought here in the form of products - from China too, incidentally - have to be kept here, and those raw materials then have to go back into the production cycle."
Giving plastics a new life is only possible through improved recycling technologies.
Florian Riedl, Head of Business Development, APK AG
"The APK Newcycling process is a solvent-based process that allows certain types of plastics to be selectively separated from mixed plastics.
For example, from multi-layer composite films, where different types of plastic occur, I can selectively dissolve certain plastics to remove them, while others do not dissolve. And that's how I get them neatly separated."
In addition to new processes, IFAT exhibitors are also presenting increasingly intelligent sorting machines.
Timo Taalas, CEO, Zenrobotics
"This machine is unique in the sense that it can be trained to pick whatever fractions you want to pick. So you just define your fraction and you train it with examples.
Like in this case, you can pick the silicon tubes from the wastestream. So it's very tailorable."
New sensor technologies are detecting ever smaller impurities and can isolate them more precisely. This is how unmixed products can be created for further processing.
Peter Kurth, Chairman, BDE
"The decisive factor will be demand for products that come from a recycling process, that is, the secondary raw materials. And there are still a few improvements that need to be made here, especially with plastics, because so far there’s been a lack of suitable instruments."
The IFAT as a platform for dialogue - for a sustainable closed-loop economy, innovative technologies are providing answers for the manufacturing sector.