As a company, we are looking for ways of securing majority support for a sustainable lifestyle.
One of the most important aspects of this work is encouraging a circular economy in plastic packaging, thus making a major contribution to solving urgent environmental problems like the contamination of the oceans.
PREVENT shares our goal of ensuring that waste is handled sustainably all over the world, with a particular focus on emerging economies. That’s one reason why one of its working groups is examining new ways to reuse recyclable materials. As the world’s leading experts in marketing packaging made from 100%-recycled, locally collected plastic, we are keen to contribute to achieving this shared objective. We see ourselves as a company that can break down barriers and inspire others by showing what is possible. We want to motivate and encourage other firms to operate more sustainably, both in our own industry and beyond. With this in mind, Werner & Mertz’s Head of Corporate Affairs Timothy Glaz serves as chair of that working group.
As an environmental pioneer, we are forcing the pace of market development with circular, fully sustainable and high-quality cleaning and hygiene solutions that protect people and the natural world.
With this aim in mind, we launched our ‘Recyclables Initiative’ back in 2012, as part of which we work together with a number of partners to pursue a genuinely circular economy. We strive to process used material from a previously under-used source to such a high level that we can use it to manufacture new plastic packaging without crude oil, even for the food industry.
A true circular economy produces no waste to be incinerated, and prevents rubbish from ending up in landfill or polluting our oceans. We know it can be done, because we’ve done it ourselves. So far, we have manufactured over 260 million plastic bottles from used plastic, and we are widely recognised as a model for sustainable packaging. We have also succeeded in producing HDPE packaging and PP hinges entirely from used plastic recycled as within Germany’s ‘Yellow Bag’ packaging recycling system.
The Recyclables Initiative is designed to be an ‘open innovation’; that means the information we gain is made freely available to the public to encourage more people to get involved in the innovation process. We are convinced that the new technologies of the circular economy will quickly establish themselves beyond individual companies, particularly as consumers in general become more aware of environmental issues.