What is TERMINUS?
TERMINUS addresses the challenge of unlocking recycling and reuse of flexible multi-layer and multi-compounds packaging.
Plastic packaging comes in many shapes and forms. With its numerous properties, it offers protection to the packaged goods. It also helps reduce the carbon footprint, as a much lighter alternative to other materials.
The combined properties of materials or layers, in multi-layer packaging, are what makes it specifically effective in the protection of goods, prologued shelf life, and therefore the optimised management of food waste.
But the complex structure is also what makes it nearly impossible to recycle, leading to the growing amount of multi-layer packaging waste.
This is where TERMINUS comes in!
TERMINUS aims at unlocking the recycling of multi-layer packaging via a range of smart enzyme-containing polymers with triggered intrinsic self-biodegradation properties.
These polymers act as adhesives or tie layers in the design and manufacturing of multi-layer plastics for food and non-food applications.
The technology will be applied to biodegradable PUR-based adhesives for adhesive lamination and extrusion coating lamination, and polymers and tie layers in blown extrusion. Controlled bio-degradation of these adhesives and tie layers would enable the separation of the different layers of the packaging, which can then be recycled using conventional recycling methods.
Increasing the recyclability of multi-layer packaging will significantly aid the efforts of reaching the European plastics and packaging recycling targets, as well as contribute towards the establishment of a circular economy for packaging.
Project impact
2
15% improvement in economic efficiency
55% reduction of plastics in landfills
65% overall CO footprint reduction
80% reduction of multi-layer plastic packaging in landfills