Advanced Thermoforming, 2nd Edition

Chapter 46Sustainability and Circular Economy

Written in cooperation with Mandy Markert, Switzerland; Edward Kosior, Nextek, Ltd., UK; Michael Wiener, DSD – Duales System Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Germany; Didier Houssier, Kuraray, EVAL Europe N.V., Belgium; Dr. Martin Bussmann, Neste, Germany; Michael Roth, W. u. H. Fernholz GmbH & co. KG, Germany; Emanuele Burgin, LyondellBasell, Italy; Georg Sposny, Germany; Dr. Carl‐Jürgen Wefelmeier and Andrea Kossmann, Gneuss Kunststofftechnik, Germany; Daniel Ganz, Janine Wyss, Alessandra Funcia, and Nicky Klammt, Sukano AG, Switzerland; and Christoph Stoye, Illig Maschinenbau, Germany

Plastics packaging is heavily under social and regulatory pressure these days. Additionally, economics and the requirement to cost reductions have not vanished. There is a small respite in these times of transition since the consumer is willing to pay a little more for sustainable packaging. But it is very likely that sustainability does not liberate us from producing cost‐effective packaging. Sooner or later sustainability will lead us to circular economy in plastic packaging. And our used packaging will not be declared as waste anymore but as valuable resource material.

Packaging applications in thermoforming are usually produced with polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), or polystyrene (PS). A very good property of the thermoforming process is its ability to cope with batch variation in recycled material, especially when it comes to thin ...