Circular Economy at RKW
The plastics industry is facing major challenges worldwide. RKW is continuously advancing circular approaches across its business areas to give plastic products a more sustainable perspective. We are making an active contribution to establishing a circular economy for this indispensable raw material and to reducing the environmental impact of our products while maintaining or even improving their performance. To this end, we are guided by the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” principle.
Sustainable Product Design
In the context of innovative, sustainable product design, our employees worldwide work to optimize resource consumption, consider potential environmental impacts throughout the product life cycle, and support recyclability and the use of recycled materials.
Downgauging
We are committed to using raw materials as efficiently as possible across all our sites and product groups. One key lever is downgauging – the production of increasingly thinner yet still high-performance films. This is achieved through the use of innovative materials, further developed raw materials, optimized formulations, and modern production equipment. Across all product groups, we work closely with suppliers and customers to develop new processes and continuously test new or modified film types. One example of downgauging is our breathable RKW HyCare® and Aptra® films for hygiene applications.
In the field of feminine hygiene, RKW has reduced raw material use in certain products by up to 25% compared with earlier versions. Overall, the average basis weight of backsheet films has been significantly reduced over the past 20 years, and further optimization work is ongoing.
Design for Recycling
A circular economy for plastics requires not only appropriate recycling infrastructure, but also products designed for subsequent sorting and recovery. As part of the “Design for Recycling” approach, our development teams continuously work on solutions to improve product recyclability, particularly where barriers, additives or other packaging components may affect downstream recovery. RKW also supports customers in assessing and further developing the recyclability of the final packaging product, including additional components such as adhesives. Examples include MDO film solutions for flexible packaging, which can help advance material-efficient packaging structures through reduced density or through full polyethylene-based solutions.
Use of recycled materials
Our focus is on gradually increasing the use of recycled materials in suitable applications and production processes. In collaboration with customers, we contribute our expertise in recyclates and recycling to further develop solutions with increased recycled content where application requirements allow. One example is our Multipack packaging films portfolio, where material-efficient designs can be combined with post-consumer recyclate (PCR) and post-industrial recyclate (PIR), depending on the application and product requirements.
Recycling and Reuse
We use production waste in different ways – within individual processes, between process steps, and across sites. For this purpose, recycling facilities are available at our sites to process production waste into regranulate, using both offline and inline methods. If production waste cannot be reused at the same site or in the same application due to technical, regulatory, or quality-related requirements, RKW uses cross-site recovery options within the Group. In this way, production waste is kept in the value chain wherever possible and can be reintegrated as a raw material.
Further information is available in our current Sustainability Report.