From incineration back into the loop
During the production of closures for milk and dairy packaging, defective or surplus caps are generated on a regular basis. A key challenge for their recyclability has been the aluminum or plastic foil integrated into the closures. Due to this composite material structure, the caps could not previously be recycled and had to be disposed of through incineration. In addition to the environmental burden of unused material, this also resulted in additional costs and operational effort for the respective site.
To fundamentally improve this situation, the team at the Mansfield site developed and installed a dedicated system that reliably separates the foil from defective and non-usable closures. Following separation and cleaning, the plastic material is granulated and reintroduced into the production process. In this way, a fully internal closed-loop recycling process has been established directly at the plant.
