Laude enlarges recycling scope by joining ReVink.

Recently Laude met Vink Kunststoffen in their brand-new offices in Didam to evaluate the first steps of their partnership in the ReVink recycling program.

Vink is the leading distributor of semi-finished plastics in Europe, with a full focus on sustainability. Therefore, Vink has integrated corporate responsibility in every single business process in their organization. They are convinced the recycling of plastics and re-use of recycled plastics will play a bigger role every year in conducting business towards 2050, when the EU should be the first continent to be completely climate neutral according to the EU Green Deal.

Being world’s leading plastic cheese mould manufacturer, we see it as our moral obligation to do the maximum possible in regards to sustainability, evaluating our carbon footprint for all business processes. Our guidance here is the ISO 14001– Environmental Management System, in which all internal- and external business procedures are documented to manage the impact of company activities on the environment. With this ISO certification we have a full understanding and control of our environmental activities, enabling us to continuously reduce our carbon footprint through our plan – do – check – act approach.

An example of this approach is the ReVink recycling program. Laude’s cheese moulds are made from high quality, suitable for food production HQ-PE or HQ-PP plastics. These unique plastic blends are owned by Laude and make sure our cheese making customers can perform with our plastic moulds in every industrial environment for many years to come. For many years, our production-process waste streams are carefully gathered, distributed and are repurposed as material for secondary processes by our long-term plastics suppliers. Traditionally recycled plastics are used for lower graded plastic products or to win back energy by heat recovery systems.

The ReVink program, however, has a different angle. Waste streams of higher graded plastics, such as Laude’s HQ-PE and HQ-PP, are recycled into high quality granulate, preventing the downgrading of materials. To do so, the gathering and sorting of the plastic waste stream needs to be flawless. Our factory is equipped to manage waste streams by extraction units which are directly connected to our production machinery, gathering and sorting plastic waste per type in big bags. Secondly, our staff is trained to manually sort bigger parts of plastic waste per type of plastic. The clear signs of plastic waste type on containers in our factory function as a reminder for our staff.  

Because of our professional waste stream management Laude has been selected by Vink to join the ReVink program, as we perfectly fit the requirements of this program. Therewith our production waste streams can be used for multiple purposes, from lower- to higher graded secondary products, enlarging the scope of the circular process of plastics.