Plastics - the material with possibilities. Packaging that thinks for itself and plastics machinery manufacturers who ensure that packaging is made from renewable raw materials. The purpose of the plastics industry is to develop packaging that thinks for itself and makes it easier for end customers to recycle packaging properly as a raw material. Intelligent recycling is the future and curious, interested young people are needed for this. Without a box, food spoils more quickly, and food that is not consumed has a negative impact on the CO2 balance. Packaging helps to preserve food for a longer period of time.
The content of the digital event can hardly be divided, in this way diverse was the three-hour event on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. The range of the material and its future-oriented development on the part of enthusiastic young people were at the center. The organizers and protagonists agreed that smart plastics are part of the solution for a sustainable future.
The plastics industry offers exciting career opportunities for women, which is how Marianne Reiche, deputy head of application technology at Kuhne Group, opened the digital format. Just think big - Think big! Why not. The plastics industry does not have to hide, in this way their clear result. And that the man-domain - the mechanical engineering - this is no longer for a long time, was clear to everyone at the latest after Reiches lecture. Riches versions were supplemented by means of Professor Dr. Johannes Steinhaus, professor for material sciences and director TREE industrial services, which pointed out the educational offers of the H-BRS. These include a degree program in sustainable engineering. The college has a visual focus on changing sustainable materials for the future.
And if it was not yet clear to the participants in the course of which they could apply in the area and which concrete offers the plastics industry makes, they learned this in the following panel discussion from Mathias Welteroth, commercial director of Lemo Maschinenbau GmbH and Peter Kuhne, partner of the Kuhne Group, who made clear on behalf of all members of the plastics initiative. After all, the initiators stand for a circular 2,200 jobs and over 100 apprenticeships. The Bonn/Rhine-Sieg plastics cluster, which is unique in Europe, offers an important component of the Bonn/Rhine-Sieg economic region with over six,000 employees subject to social insurance contributions and numerous suppliers as well as service providers, and this also in the course of the corona pandemic.

The second block dealt with the sustainability of plastic as a material within packaging and within the insulation of pipes, etc. The second block dealt with the sustainability of plastic as a material within packaging and within the insulation of pipes, etc. Huafeng Zhao, Sustainability Manager during Kautex Maschinenbau, and Sebastian Kremer, CSO (Chief Sales and Marketing Officer) in the course of silver plastics, which belongs to the Reifenhäuser Group, made it clear that new plastic packaging is increasingly made from sustainable and renewable raw materials and is environmentally friendly. In addition, packaging makes an important contribution to greater sustainability, as it guarantees a significantly longer shelf life for food. For example, a foil-wrapped cucumber has a longer shelf life than an unpackaged one for over two weeks. This also applies to packaged meat. "If you forgo presentation for the sake of the environment and spoilage occurs as a result, you have tended to hurt the carbon footprint," Kremer cited.
The event concluded with a debate entitled "Better without - plastic packaging is superfluous." The answer of the discussants was a clear "no". Both within packaging of foodstuffs and likewise during insulations it does not go without plastic. On the contrary, plastics are needed to improve the CO2 balance. It also became clear that plastics machinery manufacturers are working to offer holistic results for packaging made either from recycled materials or to make the packaging itself easily recyclable. "We need to view plastic as a valuable material and enable single-variety recycling and reuse," emphasizes Dr. Paul Walach, Director Technology, Reifenhäuser CSC. Reifenhäuser is working, for example, on monomaterial packaging made of PET, a plastic that can be increasingly used by sides the use of innovative technologies. In order to realize single-material recycling, Reifenhäuser is working on the digitalization of the value stream chain in cooperation with additional producers, including Kautex, in its in-house Project R-Cycle. In this way, the disposers notice this material, it gets a "digital stamp", a genus QR code, so that the material can be found out and supplied to a qualified further utilization.
All in all, the protagonists made it clear that the trend towards environmentally friendly and recyclable packaging is advanced and that a sustainable upgrading of the CO2 balance without plastic as a material will be difficult to achieve. Without packaging it does not go, but one would like to look united still tendency, which packagings bring increase in value. New environmentally compatible materials that can be easily recycled are the future and the plastics industry is working on this.
About the Bonn / Rhine-Sieg Plastics Initiative
"Plastics - the material with perspectives" - with such a statement the Plastics Initiative has started in the area. Together one would like to clear up, the final customers of the region with correct facts and knowledge supply and to the appropriate debate to the material "plastic" contribute. By means of different fields of application, it is to be shown how elementary plastics are, especially in times of high hygiene requirements and CO2 reduction.
The initiators of the Plastics Initiative include: Dr. Reinold Hagen Foundation, Hennecke GmbH, Kautex Maschinenbau GmbH, Kuhne Group, Lemo Maschinenbau GmbH, Siegfried Pohl Verpackungen GmbH and Reifenhäuser Group.