Recycled Paper Watermarked

--- One of the key findings at the Petcore Europe Conference, held in Brussels last week, was that in order to achieve the stringent recycling targets set out in the EU Plastics Strategy, the industry must collaborate more efficiently to develop harmonized, efficient sorting processes.

Since most recycling problems can be brought back to the sorting process, cracking sorting will crack recycling, according to Gian De Belder, Packaging Technologist, Sustainable Packaging Development at Procter & Gamble (P&G).

They add an image of luxury to all print communications.

The Genuine Private Watermark, originated by Gilbert Paper, has been a most prestigious tangible asset to corporate branding for over a century.

They act as barcodes, can hold consumer engagement capabilities and work for anti-counterfeiting purposes.

P&G are now running final proof of concept trials for project Holy Grail in March and April and plan to go live after May with an industrial trial.At the conference, De Belder announced that Conditional approval has been given by EPBP (European PET Bottle Platform) was given for the Household and Personal Care industry, and others might follow.“Sleeved bottles are a good solution for heavily colored opaque bottles. Depending on the country, some are sending them to the colored streams or into incineration and landfill. Updating the sorting process using intelligent and connected packaging A second lecture by De Belder focused on streamlining the sorting and recycling process.The sorting machines cannot always detect the sleeve or the bottle underneath the sleeve. As it stands, within the EU, there is a lack of harmonized systems which makes it hard for global brand owners to design and market their products.Through its project coined “Holy Grail,” P&G is leading a full value chain investigating how current sorting lines can be improved through modules that can simply be “added onto” existing lines.One example is using watermarks which have been developed by partner companies Digimarc and Fili Grade.P&G innovates in recycling ODR products A big step forward in increasing the recyclability of Opaque and Difficult to Recycle (ODR) Household and Personal Care (HPC) PET bottles was announced for the first time at the Petcore Conference by De Belder of P&G.Bottles in this market category with perforated sleeves which allow consumers to tear off the sleeve and dispose of it at home have received conditional European PET Bottle Platform (EPBP) approval.However, such systems are unable to identify (at high efficiencies) opaque plastics and full body sleeved products, for example.“Big retailers such as Wegmans in the US use watermarks commercially in their private label brands.Also, Waltmart is looking into what this technology can offer to them.They are ultimately changing the system conditions under which businesses operate, especially those that buy and sell packaging.Amid such conditions, leading companies are innovating to provide solutions that will allow the industry, which is under mounting regulatory and economic pressure, to reach the stringent targets that they are being held accountable to.