Reduce Waste

The objective of efficient sorted material management is to implement collection, sorting and recycling technologies for these materials to return them to the value chain as far as possible. In doing so, the fraction of the materials that are returned to the chain should gradually increase in proportion to the quantity of waste. This is achieved, among other things, by continuously optimizing processes and recycling technologies. In recent years, it has been possible to reduce raw material consumption and waste quantities in nearly all stages of manufacturing at SÜDPACK. In relation to the through­put volume, for example, production-related waste was reduced by more than 4 percentage points from 2018 to 2019.

 

 

Thinner film structures

To reduce the quantities of waste last year, the shift in our portfolio towards thinner film structures as well as improved collection and recycling of our trim loss made a significant contribution.

Reduction of Relative Waste Quantity based on Production Volume

*Please refer to the Progress Report 2021 for current figures.

 

 

Optimized material flow management

To mechanically recycle industrial waste at our German production sites, we have implemented different processes. With optimized material flow management, we are able to systematically sort our industrial production waste, which consists primarily of edge strips and set-up material, by polymer. They are then processed as reusable material and returned to the production process. For automated and sorted collection of the cutting waste at our production site in Erolzheim, we have established a separate collection area for reusable materials. These collected reusable materials are regranulated with our own equipment and used again in high-quality products. These processes have made it possible to continuously decrease the quantities of waste in recent years.

lt was possible to increase the quantity of reprocessed and reused industrial waste in 2019 by 37.3 % compared to the previous year. Moreover, we were able to sell more than 1,000 tons of processed materials to third parties in 2019.

To increase the efficiency of our recycling processes, further investments were made in additional equipment for waste processing at the Ochsenhausen site in 2019. At the site in Kłobuck, film waste generated during production is also sorted by type of material to allow for optimal recycling. At the site in Bioggio, limited sorting of industrial waste is performed, as waste has been primarily recycled using energy recovery methods in Switzerland so far.