In the "Circular Competence" interview series, the VDMA Printing and Paper Technology Association asks its member companies about their plans, solutions, and challenges on the road to a circular economy. What can the industry do to minimise the ecological footprint of packaging and other printed products?

Frankfurt - As managing directors, Simone and Timo Mosca keep the family-run Mosca GmbH on course for sustainability. This includes closed-loop processes and energy efficiency in strapping technology and transport security.

Do you use recycling and waste avoidance concepts in your own production?

Absolutely. When I did my training as an industrial mechanic here 40 years ago, there were two waste bins. One for chips, the other for waste. Today, we separate residual materials into different fractions. These days, we manufacture plastic parts for our machines additively, whereby no waste is produced. Metals are returned separately to the material cycles. Plastic foils as well. The amount of residual waste is therefore very manageable. Especially since we have equipped our employees with cups instead of plastic drinking cups and have set up water dispensers. We use modern energy-efficient production technology and have switched from pneumatic to electric drive technology as far as possible. We also produce the corresponding plastic straps in addition to the strapping technology, we also rely on consistent recycling here. We completely recycle production waste and start-up losses into the process. 

What Circular Economy solutions do you offer your customers?

We are working on agreements with larger customers that they collect the plastic straps and return them to us for recycling. Advantage: The plastics used are 100 per cent recyclable. However, direct cycles are difficult to implement from a logistical and economic point of view. This is because the used tapes have a large volume with little weight, as long as they are not shredded. But we are pushing the issue. My wife is very active and implements projects with partner companies. We are also working on energy-efficient strapping technology with electric drives. The greater leverage, however, lies with the straps, which we offer in three types of plastic: PET, polypropylene and PLA, an industrially compostable bioplastic. We produce PET straps from 100 per cent bottle flakes, i.e., shredded PET bottles that can no longer be returned to the material cycle of the beverage industry. With PLA, the important thing is that it is actually composted. If it enters the cycle of other plastics, this has a negative impact on the quality of the recyclates. In addition, PLA has so far been up to six times more expensive than conventional plastics.

How does the topic affect your research and development and your cooperation with your customers and their material suppliers?

We are cooperating ever more closely with partner companies in research and development in order to establish closed-loop solutions. This is absolutely necessary because material cycles will only work if the machine builders, material and recycling specialists and users involved exchange information about their requirements and needs. In addition, we are pushing forward networking in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI applications, among other things so that we can offer predictive maintenance solutions for our machines. When machines report their maintenance needs, they run more smoothly, produce fewer rejects, and ultimately extend their life cycle. For me, this is also part of sustainable business. In addition, we are pushing ahead with many small research projects in the search for sustainable solutions. Among others, one with Japanese specialists who are reactivating an old process for producing paper tapes from several layers of paper and natural resins. We are trying to develop a solution for the industrial processing of these tapes. In the background, there is a global corporation that would like to use these tapes. Another field of research concerns our transport safety devices. We are making great efforts to realise optimal fuses with as little material as possible. For this purpose, we are currently setting up a technical laboratory in which we are systematically investigating how much material can be used to optimally secure goods in transit.

Is the demand for your Circular Competence increasing worldwide - or is this more of a regional phenomenon?

Primarily, it is a German and European issue. However, there is a growing awareness in the USA too, that we should establish material cycles to protect resources and the environment. However, in emerging countries people often have other problems. Initiatives like the Plastic Bank are working to change this. They pay people to collect rubbish and plastics. It is not much money that the collectors earn with it. When you consider that almost 90 percent of the plastic in the world's oceans comes from three rivers in Africa and Asia, it becomes clear that this initiative can have leverage. It is about establishing waste collection systems locally and creating awareness that the raw materials which contain a value does not end up in the environment. Besides the regional differences, it makes a difference whether the solutions for the B2B market or for the end-customer business are in demand.

Environmental protection is often driven by regulation. Are the framework conditions right for entering the Circular Economy?

Politics should give us space to develop solutions. In recent years, there has been a very clear awareness that we need sustainable solutions. All the mechanical engineering companies and all the material suppliers, I know are working intensively on this. The direction is right. However, there is a huge amount of bureaucracy and regulation, often not thought out till the end, which is tying up forces and resources. In addition, there is an imbalance between products which are produced in the EU and those were imported. The latter are often subject to more lax rules and controls. This inequality is also evident in taxation. At the same time, the policy leaves huge loopholes and grey areas that often have a demotivating effect. Waste exports to countries with weak environmental regulation is one such case, which certainly does not contribute to the trust we so urgently need for functioning material cycles. I wish that politics would adopt a different tone for the upcoming transformation processes, that we would move away from apportioning blame and see it as a common task to steer the material use of raw materials into cycles until only thermal recycling is possible. We have long since set out on this path. We have been looking for and finding solutions for a long time - of our own accord. In most cases, regulation hinders more than it helps.

Do you have any questions? Lisa Raphaela Grübl, telephone 069 6603 1450, [email protected], will be happy to answer them.