Starlinger joins sustainable packaging initiative

Since September 2020, Starlinger, supplier of plastics machinery with company locations in Vienna, Lower and Upper Austria, has been part of “Plattform für Verpackung mit Zukunft” (“Platform for Packaging with a Future”), a group of companies linked to the packaging industry with the common goal to establish a more resource-conserving and sustainable use of packaging.

“It is not enough just to think green. To establish a functioning packaging cycle we need clear goals, technical solutions, and legal regulations which have to be implemented consequently and evaluated continuously,” says Clarissa Graf, Sustainability Manager at Starlinger & Co. Ges.m.b.H.. “The platform “Verpackung mit Zukunft” connects companies which have already developed solutions or made advances in this field and enables them to join forces to make further steps. Starlinger wants to actively participate in this.”

As a supplier for machinery for the production of woven plastic packaging as well as plastics recycling Starlinger offers not only sustainable packaging solutions but also the recycling lines to reprocess them. Innovative sack concepts – made of recycled PET and polypropylene, among others – which Starlinger develops focusing on “Design for Recycling” – are setting the trend for a functioning circular economy for packaging.

In the field of plastics recycling Starlinger relies on more than 30 years of experience. The worldwide installed Starlinger lines process plastics such as PE and PP, PET, PA, PS, PLA, PMMA and many more. The high-quality regranulate produced can be used in various applications. To avoid so-called “down-cycling”, highest purity and quality of the regranulate are paramount.  “Ideally, a PET bottle should become a PET bottle again, and a big bag.  “This “real” recycling process we want to put into practice with our Circular Packaging Concept”, describes Clarissa Graf the model for a closed packaging loop developed by Starlinger.  

The platform “Verpackung mit Zukunft” brings together companies along the packaging value chain which aim to establish resource-saving production, usage and recycling of packaging. It enables the exchange of information regarding packaging and circular economy, and intends to create a holistic solution by combining already existing individual measures. The vision: A circular economy that goes beyond recycling. Currently, the platform “Verpackung mit Zukunft” has 18 members.