Recycle plastic, protect the climate – an approach that bears fruit

Cologne. A sustainable investment in the circular economy: with the consistent development of its Recycled-Resource recycling process – most recently through the introduction of the COREMA® cascade extrusion system – the environmental services provider Interseroh is actively contributing to the protection of both the climate and resources. This has been confirmed by a study completed on behalf of Interseroh by the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (UMSICHT). According to the calculations of the researchers, the use of the recycled plastic Recythen with the new single-stage process leads to an average 60 percent reduction in climate-damaging emissions in comparison with the use of newly granulated plastic from crude oil. In addition, the consumption of primary energy per tonne is some 21,000 kWh below the comparative value. This difference is roughly equivalent to the energy consumption of 14,000 washing machine cycles. Even the use of the recycled raw material Procyclen, which is relatively expensive to manufacture, results in a 54 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The data is based on values from 2018.

“The figures strengthen our view that we are on the right path,” said Dr Manica Ulcnik-Krump, Head of Business Unit Recycled-Resource at INTERSEROH Dienstleistungs GmbH. “An effective closed-loop management of plastics which has been improved further from the technical perspective relieves the burden on the climate and increases the benefit to our customers from the industrial sector.”

Recompounds, which are manufactured with the use of Interseroh’s multi award-winning in-house Recycled-Resource process, are already replacing new products in many areas. With the innovative extrusion system COREMA®, for which Interseroh and the manufacturer EREMA were presented with the 2019 Plastics Recycling Award Europe, for the first time, it is now possible to manufacture recycling compounds in just one process stage rather than the previous two. “This leads to a clear reduction in the consumption of both energy and resources,” explained Dr eng. Markus Hiebel, Head of the Department for Sustainability and the Management of Resources at Fraunhofer UMSICHT. In addition to this, additives, modifying agents and inorganic fillers can be ad-mixed directly in the manufacturing process. In this respect, the quality control of the material rheology and colour-stability takes place on a digital basis and in real time. In this way, Interseroh is able to manufacture individual recompounds for particularly high-quality applications according to customer requirement – and protect the climate at the same time.

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