Recycling Models - Current Trends and New Developments

Posted by Mira Das on September 28th, 2018

Waste recycling is a challenging task for many food processing and packaging companies and some of them encourage the adoption of practices for a sustainable lifestyle and to increase awareness about correct waste management practices. Obtaining high-value products in compliance with the process economy and greenery environment are still an unachieved goal for many companies.

Carton packaging is primarily made up of paper which is 75% by weight and the rest 25% is Polyethylene, aluminum that is fully recyclable, has a low carbon footprint, as its main raw material – wood fiber, if well-managed, is renewable. As a part of environmental initiatives, Carton packaging manufacturers have undertaken various activities for waste recycling and working with various NGO's and the waste picker workforce for waste segregation. With the aim to ensure that the PCCs are retrieved and recycled responsibly and that no carton ends up at the landfill, carton packaging company has taken up several studies in the past in this regard.

Waste Recycling Technologies

Some of the wide variety of technological approaches signalize that none of the currently applied solutions gained the significant advantage, these are:

Composition and Typical Usage

The carton packaging produced by laminating together paper and Aluminium into one composite material in which the paper is used to help ensure rigid shape of the final product and also to increase the material strength, where aluminum is used because of its excellent barrier properties for agents like light, oxygen, water vapor, odors and micro-organisms.

Applied Industrial Technologies

The technologies that have been successfully applied can be divided into two groups; those that process the whole UTPC material as it is, and those that rely on hydro-pulping as the first step, separating cellulose fiber from PE-AL laminate.

  • Processing without hydro-pulping: in most cases, it is possible only by means of energy recovery or by obtaining products of low quality (downcycling).
  • Processing with hydro-pulping: this is the most mature technology regarding UTPC processing is hydro-pulping based on a similar approach as in conventional waste recycling with minor changes during pulp separation from the rejected PE-AL.

As the technology is becoming a crucial part in the packaging and processing industry, most of the packaging and processing brands have set their focus towards a sustainable future, making their products recyclable and sustainable.

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Mira Das

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Mira Das
Joined: September 25th, 2018
Articles Posted: 4

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