Waste into food packaging applications

Ineos Sty­ro­lu­tion, oper­at­ing in styren­ics; Tom­ra, active in waste trans­for­ma­tion; and EGN Entsorgungs­ge­sellschaft Nieder­rhein, a recy­cling com­pa­ny, have announced a project to con­vert post-con­sumer poly­styrene (PS) waste into recy­cled poly­styrene for food pack­ag­ing applications.

EGN, a sub­sidiary of SWK, will build a green field state-of-the-art advanced mechan­i­cal recy­cling facil­i­ty pro­cess­ing with a capac­i­ty to process 40 kilo­tons of post-con­sumer poly­styrene (PS) waste per year. EGN will man­age sort­ing and wash­ing, while Ineos Sty­ro­lu­tion will be respon­si­ble for the “super-clean­ing” purifi­ca­tion process to com­ply with the Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty (EFSA) require­ments for food con­tact applications.

The facil­i­ty will be locat­ed in Krefeld, Ger­many. It is expect­ed to start up in mid-2025, allow­ing Ineos Sty­ro­lu­tion to start serv­ing cus­tomers at com­mer­cial scale. An agree­ment with Tom­ra to pro­vide sort­ing tech­nol­o­gy and feed­stock com­pletes the project. Tom­ra Feed­stock will col­lect post-con­sumer poly­styrene waste from dis­posed food pack­ag­ing and deliv­er it to the site in Krefeld, Germany.

Pierre Vin­cent, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor EGN says: “We share Ineos Styrolution’s vision of clos­ing the loop for food-con­tact qual­i­ty poly­styrene. I expect the dairy indus­try to espe­cial­ly ben­e­fit from this offer­ing by allow­ing them to mechan­i­cal­ly recy­cle from yoghurt pot to yoghurt pot cre­at­ing a true cir­cu­lar econ­o­my for this material.”

Jür­gen Priesters, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Tom­ra Feed­stock, com­ments: “We are proud to con­tribute to this first com­mer­cial-scale poly­styrene mechan­i­cal recy­cling facil­i­ty for food con­tact appli­ca­tions. Poly­styrene has the right com­po­si­tion to be recy­cled mechan­i­cal­ly for food appli­ca­tions. The mis­sion of Tom­ra Feed­stock is to keep PS in true circularity.”

The advanced mechan­i­cal recy­cling process ben­e­fits from the inher­ent prop­er­ties of poly­styrene mak­ing it the mate­r­i­al of choice for real cir­cu­lar­i­ty. PS is proven to be good sortable plas­tics in the waste stream and is one of only two poly­mers that can achieve food-con­tact qual­i­ties with mechan­i­cal recy­cling. The mate­r­i­al offers infi­nite recy­cla­bil­i­ty, retain­ing its prop­er­ty pro­file after many mechan­i­cal recy­cling cycles at vir­gin qual­i­ty lev­els. Due to its prop­er­ties, PS offers low con­t­a­m­i­na­tion uptake in the waste stream.

It is expect­ed that a per­cent­age of recy­cled food pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al will be realised in a short time­frame. Invest­ment in com­mer­cial scal­ing of PS recy­cling will lead to a grow­ing mar­ket share and a reduc­tion in pack­ag­ing tax­es and licens­ing fees in coun­tries where such frame­works are in place.