Certified sustainability in the bucket

With immediate effect, the recycled packaging of the more than 220 million injection-molded packaging articles from groku Kunststoffe GmbH in Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock will include a certificate that guarantees, among other things, the use of PCR material in the production of groku products.

“We are very proud to be REDcert² certified and to be able to make a credible PCR promise to our customers and consumers,” says Managing Director Henrik Großekämper. With this contribution to a transparent and functioning circular economy, the company is ideally prepared for future challenges such as statutory recycling quotas and plastics taxes in other EU countries.

A good example of a sustainable product from groku Kunststoffe is the 12.5 l bucket for the customer DAW SE, based in Ober-Ramstadt. The packaging bucket for paints consists of 70% PCR material, whose raw material source is PP waste from the Yellow Bag recycling collection and is easily recognizable by its grey color. Henrik Großekämper explains: “We only buy PCR granules from EUCertPlast and ISCC+ certified processors and process them in our products in different mixing ratios with virgin material, depending on customer requirements.” As part of a process-related mass balance procedure, which includes the complete traceability of all raw materials used and which groku Kunststoffe maintains for all input and output material flows as part of its ERP system, it is possible to show exactly what proportion of recycled material has been incorporated into the respective end product. This procedure has been successfully audited by TÜV NORD CERT GmbH, an approved certification body for the REDcert² Chemie system. “This makes us the first manufacturer of plastic packaging articles to be REDcert² certified,” the Managing Director proudly emphasizes, adding: “If we specify a recycled content for one of our packaging articles, this is guaranteed and verifiably included.” In the case of the 12.5 l bucket for DAW SE, the use of recycled material instead of pure virgin material leads to a CO² saving of 0.4 kg per container and thus contributes to resource conservation and climate protection.

The bucket, which has an appealing design thanks to the in-mould labeling process despite its grey base color, was developed with and for the customer DAW SE, which itself has already had its binders certified under the REDcert² system. The well-known European supplier of paints and varnishes, which includes the Caparol brand with its distinctive symbol of the colorful elephant, committed itself to sustainability over ten years ago. In addition to climate-neutral production of its paints and varnishes, it also focuses on sustainable packaging products. The Indeko-plus bucket from groku Kunststoffe with a recycled content of 70% fits perfectly with the requirements profile for a sustainable and efficient packaging product. “Depending on the desired property profile, we develop recipes for our packaging articles for our customers that can contain up to 100% PCR,” explains Henrik Großekämper. groku Kunststoffe produces around 220 million packaging articles, buckets and lids every year, primarily for manufacturers of paints and building protection materials, adhesives and dry asphalt or bitumen, as well as other bulk goods in the non-food sector. The injection molding company, which employs around 150 people, also produces buckets of various shapes and sizes for the food sector in addition to containers with a volume of 1 l to 30 l for the non-food sector and therefore has an enormous wealth of experience in the manufacture of sustainable plastic products throughout Europe.

Source: groku