Recycling-friendly, traceable blow molded bottle made of sustainable materials

Together with plastic raw material supplier Braskem, plastic packaging manufacturer KautexTextron and Netherlands-based recycling specialist company Morssinkhoff Plastics, Kautex Maschinenbau has launched the R-Cycle pilot project “Smart sustainable packaging in Blow Molding”. This combination of project partners maps the entire value chain from plastics production to processing and recycling. The project objective is to develop a recycling-friendly and traceable bottle made of sustainable materials.

The target product has been defined for a first step as a 1-liter bottle made from two different HDPE materials: One bottle is made from Braskem’s I’m greenTM biobased PE, produced from sugar cane (white bottle), The second bottle is made from Braskem’s I’m greenTM Recycled PE, a material made from recycled plastic waste (grey bottle). 

Both bottles are produced with extrusion blow molding processes, using a machine from Kautex Maschinenbau that offers ideal conditions for processing new types of plastics and is integrated with coding and marking technology via digital interfaces. Both bottles, produced with both sustainable materials, are 100% recyclable. By this, they can be returned to the recycling loop and granulated into a high-quality recycled material.

The tracing technology behind the R-Cycle pilot project is based on GS1 standards. In the first step, we are using QR codes as marking technology for the bottle. In addition, other possible marking technologies will also be tested during the project.