Extrusion International 6-2022

35 Extrusion International 6/2022 26 Companies Presented R-Cycle at K 2022 – Product Passport Enables Circular Economy for Plastic Products R -Cycle – the digital product passport for plastic prod- ucts – enables all stakeholders in the value chain to easily exchange recycling-relevant information in an open standard format across company boundaries and make it accessible for various applications, such as improved waste sorting. A total of 26 leading companies and organizations presented R-Cycle at K 2022 as part of a joint booth in the Circular Economy Forum. Looking at today's waste streams, recyclable products – especially plastic packaging – cannot be sorted with suffi - cient accuracy for high-quality recycling. With R-Cycle, pro- duction machines read and record relevant data in a digital product passport, route it through the value chain, and make it retrievable via appropriate marking (e.g., QR codes or digital watermarks) on semi-finished and final products. In this way, waste sorting lines can easily identify recyclable packaging and form recycling-friendly and single-variety fractions. This is the basis for obtaining high-quality recy- clates and building a functioning circular economy. In addition to improving product sustainability, manu- facturers also increase their process efficiency and prod - uct quality by using the digital product passport. Accu- rate information about source materials accelerates and optimizes production, while capturing proprietary prod- uct characteristics adds value for customers in the down- stream value chain. "Data exchange is the key to an efficient circular econ - omy," Dr. Benedikt Brenken, Director R-Cycle, explains. "The data is already available at the individual stations of the value chain. They just need to be transmitted, aggregated and made usable via an open standard. This is exactly what we offer with R-Cycle." R-Cycle was developed to market maturity by various technology compa- nies and organizations along the entire lifecycle of plastic products and can be networked with all systems (e.g., PPS, ERP) and production facilities: from film, blow molding or injection mold - ing machines to processing, packaging and fillingmachines to waste sorting and recycling lines. The traceability technology behind R-Cycle is based on GS1 stan- dards – the leading global network for cross-industry pro- cess development and a founding member of R-Cycle. R-Cycle is an interoperable infrastructure offered as soft- ware-as-a-service. In addition, an open community exists for interested companies, institutions or stakeholders who want to use, support or further develop R-Cycle. Members gain access to a broad network of appli- cation-experienced partners and know- how in digitalization and sustainability. The goal is to realize individual applica- tions, generate benefits by networking the value chain and jointly establish R- Cycle worldwide. Interested companies can obtain all information about mem- bership at: www.r-cycle.org R-Cycle was awarded the prestigious "Sustainability Award" in the category "Driving the Circular Economy" in Sep- tember 2022. The award was presented during this year's "Sustainable Packag- ing Summit" in Lisbon. The event is the leading international forum for sustain- able packaging. ProData GmbH www.r-cycle.org R-Cycle captures all recycling-relevant data along the entire value chain via digital product passports (Photo: Bettina Jopp-Witt/VM Verlag) The digital product passport can be accessed via the digital watermarks hidden in the printed image of this All-PE pouch (Picture: R-Cycle)