Plastics

| The first garbage bag specially designed for water or coffee vending machines which promotes recycling of disposable cups has been patented by a Spanish businessman, Gonzalo Bayona. 

| 160 experts and leaders from the entire PET value chain in Europe and beyond met at the 2016 Petcore Europe sold-out conference in Brussels on 23 February.

| The European Organization for Packaging and the Environment(EUROPEN) has made some recommendations on the EU legislative proposals for the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and Waste Framework Directive.

| If an ambitious announcement is made, it is bound to raise high expectations. Now the EU Commission will have to live with the fact that it was unable to fulfil these expectations with its new circular economy package. Nevertheless, the package is not a total failure, quite the contrary.

| Veolia and ZenRobotics, have agreed on a delivery of a ZenRobotics Recycler waste sorting system. The delivery of the waste sorting robots will take place in spring 2016 and the robots will be the first of their kind in France.

| According to Business waste, the UK's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has held a conference and appealed to industry associations in a re-evaluation of its targets set for business packaging recycling.

| Green Creative has developed a food waste depackaging machine that separates organic waste from its packaging without using water and without grinding. By removing the packaging from food residues, Flexidry recovers the fermentable fraction of waste that can be turned into biogas and fertilizer.

| According to a report by the World Economic Forum, Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey, applying circular economy principles to global plastic packaging flows could transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans.

| The ZRR from Zenrobotics is now fully trainable, which means that operators can themselves train the robot to sort just about anything. The new feature enables customers to quickly react to changes in the waste. For the first time customers have full control of what is sorted.

| Over the past 15 years, PVC has undergone a remarkable transformation from being a much-maligned plastic material to playing an important role in addressing climate change and establishing a circular economy.

| With the new sorting system BTB PET-Recycling wants to reduce the waste volume to be competitive.

| Recoup, the plastic packaging recycling body, is to join the expanding ownership of OPRL, which runs the increasingly popular packaging recycling label scheme. This latest development further extends ownership across bodies sharing OPRL’s mission to promote greater and more effective recycling of packaging materials. It aims to create a strong leadership position for industry on recycling issues.

| The Steinert Group’s new sorting machines Unisort Film and UNISORT BlackScan can detect Plastic films and black plastics with AOC and HSI technology.

| The European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates – ECPI - is disappointed by the European Parliament’s plenary vote against the Commission proposal to authorise the recycling of soft PVC containing DEHP. The final decision will be taken by the European Commission which is not obligated to follow the European Parliament’s opinion.