The cross-industry initiative for high-quality plastics recycling "R-Cycle" has been nominated for the German Innovation Award for Climate and Environment (IKU) 2022 of the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWi). The technical selection was made together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe.
The IKU is awarded every two years for ideas that show new ways in the field of climate and environmental protection. In this way, the organizers honor the commitment of industry and research to climate and environmental protection. From a total of 150 applications, 21 candidates were nominated in 7 different categories. R-Cycle is in the final selection for the category "Use of digital change for climate and environmentally friendly innovations". The announcement of the winners as well as the award ceremony will take place in spring 2022.
Dr. Benedikt Brenken, Director of the R-Cycle Initiative, explains, "Being nominated for this prestigious award is a great honor for us. With R-Cycle, we want to make a decisive contribution, together with all partners, to increasing recycling rates for plastic packaging, enabling high-quality recycling and ultimately establishing a functioning circular economy for this material."
The newly appointed Federal Minister of Economics, Dr. Robert Habeck, emphasizes: "The many submissions show the enormous potential in the areas of sustainability, circular economy or resource conservation that can still be raised with good ideas!" For many years, the IKU has been drawing attention to technologies, products and services that can make an important contribution to sustainable business. "I am pleased to see that more and more companies are willing to make their contribution to the climate and the environment," the Federal Minister of Economics continued.
R-Cycle creates the basis for highly developed recycling processes for plastic packaging by automatically recording recycling-relevant properties in a digital product passport during production. Using this additional information, waste sorting plants can identify recyclable packaging, form recycling-friendly and single-variety fractions, and thus enable the recovery of high-quality recyclates.
