Reconomy combines technology and skills to enable businesses to better manage their resources, helping to reduce waste, optimise their supply chains and contribute in a meaningful way towards the circular economy.

While this involves working directly with print companies, Reconomy has also partnered with several leading manufacturers and distributors, supporting its customers with textile waste management. One such partnership is with Soyang Europe, whereby printers using materials from Soyang Europe can responsibly dispose of their waste.

This partnership came about three years ago with the support of Fespa UK. Reconomy was working on sustainability initiatives with Fespa, while Soyang Europe is a long-term member of the association.

The process works with Reconomy providing customers with a baler to prepare their textile waste. Soyang Europe then collects the bales when delivering new products to customers, with the waste taken to its facility in Altham in Lancashire ready for bulk collection and transportation to a recycling facility for processing.

‘It was a perfect fit,’ said Reconomy’s director Jon Hutton. ‘Soyang has always been proactive in wanting to offer their customers, and the wider industry, waste management solutions for their products.

‘Sustainability is a hot topic for several reasons. Brands and consumers are looking down the supply chain for environmental credentials, so it’s therefore a driving factor in how to not only maintain and gain business, but how a printer positions themselves for the long term.’

Mark Mashiter, managing director at Soyang Europe, added, ‘It provides our customers with an outlet for their waste. This works well with local customers when we deliver orders to them; we can bring any textile bales back with us and store them in our yard until they are collected.’

Originally, Reconomy had sourced a solution for recycling PVC banner and polyester fabrics at a UK site, whereby waste was blended with other polymers to produce low grade products. While this process ended when more desirable material became available to the market, a recovery route was soon set up and, with the support of Wheeldon Brothers, waste could now be diverted from landfill to renewable energy.

However, recycling has since been re-established and material is again being used in manufacturing processes. Coupled with its use for renewable energy, all of this is helping work towards a circular economy.

An additional benefit to the service is that Soyang Europe is willing to take other supplier’s waste textiles along with its own. This option is available to customers using their own transport within a set radius of Soyang Europe’s facility and when making deliveries.

‘Soyang Europe wants to be part of the environmental solution and not the problem,’ Jon said. ‘The take-back scheme provides a platform for printers to demonstrate their sustainability by providing customers with an outlet for their recycling waste.

‘Several customers have engaged with Reconomy further and are now collecting their own clients’ end-of-campaign textiles, integrating this with the collection of their materials. All loads are tracked, and Certificates of Recycling can be issued once the material has been processed.’

The work does not stop here for Reconomy, with Mr Hutton saying the company will continue to work with Soyang Europe, Fespa UK and its wider membership base to provide more sustainable solutions to the UK industry. 

‘It’s our aim to continue to be a driving force in educating the industry on the importance of recycling and developing circular economies,’ Mr Hutton said. ‘This, with the continued support of Soyang Europe, will ensure more customers take up this service.’

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Over the past decade, the companies have collaborated at exhibitions across the UK and Europe, at open days hosted at the Jetrix Demonstration and Innovation Centre in Witney, Oxfordshire, and at numerous customer demos.  

Most recently at Fespa 2022 in Berlin, InkTec used Brett Martin’s Foamalux foam PVC substrate on the Jetrix LXi8 LED UV flatbed printer. The Foamalux range, with its white, coloured, matt, gloss and sustainable options, has a smooth surface, ideal for the high production speeds offered by the LXi8. 

Ben Woodruff, Jetrix head of sales, said, ‘Choosing a printer to invest in is a big decision. Any company buying a printer for the first time, renewing an old one or expanding their business wants to know that they will be investing in a product that gives them and their customers a high quality end product.

‘From our point of view, using a product like Foamalux which has a high level of consistency gives an element of reliability to our demos. We know that they will go smoothly, time after time, month after month, year after year and now decade after decade.’

The collaboration between InkTec and Brett Martin is part of the Northern Ireland based plastics manufacturer’s Approved Partner Programme, whereby it works closely with selected printing, cutting and thermoforming machine manufacturers to test and showcase the capabilities of its semi-finished product portfolio.   

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Under the MetaStream programme, printed products will be recovered at the end of their useful lives and recycled. This means OPG can recover and send the livery graphics it produces for recycling into a variety of products – such as luxury paper goods, traffic cones and furniture – that can themselves be recycled, so keeping resources out of landfill and incineration waste streams.

The programme, commonly used in vehicle branding campaigns, works with the company to collect PVC and liner waste during the graphics manufacturing process, at the point of installation or during any end‐of‐life recovery. Recovered waste is baled, palletised and then collected by Metamark and processed through MetaStream.

Metamark will then salvage the eligible recovered materials – all of which are suitable for use with HP Latex inks – and turn them into products that can then be reused in a whole host of applications. The process diverts substantial amounts of waste. OPG receives an audited certificate to declare that recovered qualifying materials were recycled using MetaStream. This can then be passed on to the company’s customers to demonstrate that their vehicle liveries both look the part and contribute to lessening the environmental impact.

OPG uses HP Latex hardware including the HP Latex 3200 and a more recently-added Latex 800W printer. Since the firm has been specifying HP Latex inks and Metamark films for several years, the company’s existing customers’ qualifying fleet graphics, even those produced before the availability of the MetaStream process, also qualify for inclusion in the new programme.

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The organisation says that working with Prismm it will aim to offer a ‘totally impartial’ waste management scheme so that wherever materials are bought, printers will not be tied to one provider to dispose of their waste responsibly.

Suzi Wilkinson, managing director of Fespa UK Association, told Digital Printer, ‘It is very clear that medium to small printers are struggling to either get enough tonnage together to be able to recycle the banners, or secondly, actually getting waste management companies to turn up and collect on a regular basis [are] the biggest headaches. It’s very early days but the more printers we can get involved the quicker it will take shape.

‘Our aim is to bring as many printers together and then as a collective group build an infrastructure to responsibly dispose of as many types of substrate waste as possible. Because we deal with a wide range of printers throughout the industry, we are best placed to bring the industry together and work towards an industry-wide waste management system,’ she added.

The plan is to use Prismm’s logistics infrastructure and knowledge of recycling markets to find solutions for specific waste types, the first of which is rigid polypropylenes. These are already being collected from printers across the UK for recycling. PVC and polyester banners will be next.

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In May 2019 the Basel Convention classified waste PVC as a notifiable material. From 1 January 2021 movement of PVC, for instance to the dump, must be notified and extensive paperwork completed. The paperwork must specify all points through which the waste PVC will pass and fees are involved, based on the volumes and the frequency of shipments. Failure to comply will incur fines.

This is good news for the environment and also for print’s sustainability. According to Wikipedia about 40 million tonnes of PVC are produced each year and it is the world’s third most widely used polymer after polyethylene and polypropolyne. It’s used everywhere from doorframes to piping and packaging and signage. But even though it is useful it is also a highly toxic material to produce, use and dispose of. Greenpeace calls it the ‘Poison Plastic’ because from its production to its end of life, PVC releases a variety of toxic chemicals into the environment. And as is the way with environmental toxins, these chemicals are building up in our air, water and foodchains. This is serious stuff because besides harming the environment, chemicals released from PVC disposal can be directly injurious to human health.

That PVC is now considered a notifiable material is good news, although perhaps not if you’re in the business of buying or producing printed PVC banners and signs. Clearly the new rules will have a particular impact on sign and display makers and their customers who will have to either go with the red tape or choose some other substrate for their work. The new rules will also make PVC much more expensive to use, but that is part of the intention. Environmental rules are designed to change behaviours and in the case of the Basel Convention on PVC, will encourage companies to look elsewhere for their banner and signage substrates. This is most likely to raise the profile and use of textiles as an alternative, so we can expect to see a glut of new textile based substrates come to market. These will offer equivalent benefits to PVC but will not come under the purview of the Basel Convention, be impossible to recycle or dangerous for human health.

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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The companies will be using the event to launch their new recycling scheme, which offers a solution to the industry’s PVC waste dilemma and aims to pioneer the use of PVC banner material as an environmentally sustainable substrate.

They will therefore offer the opportunity for all PVC banner graphics, prints or stand construction to be recycled during and after the event, which takes place at the NEC in Birmingham, later this month. 

‘The Print Show is excited to be part of the new joint venture between Soyang Europe and The Blue Castle Group,’ said event director, Chris Davies. ‘Having seen the PVC recycling plant myself, this is a game changer for what usually ends up in landfill and with an ever increasing need to protect the planet, this PVC recycling solution is something the whole industry needs to get behind.

‘I’m very proud to support and showcase this exciting development and as the exhibition organiser, we will be inviting all exhibitors to utilise the recycling area, having any PVC waste generated at the show recycled. I encourage everyone attending the event that has PVC waste to speak with the Soyang Europe and Blue Castle teams at the show.’

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The agreement aims to provide a solution to the industry’s PVC waste problem by pioneering the use of recycled PVC banner material for a variety of other applications.

The PVC Recycling Membership Scheme has been a long time in the making, as Soyang Europe’s managing director Mark Mashiter explained: ‘The PVC Recycling Scheme is the first step towards a very real recycling solution to the use of PVC banner material, which is widely used within the printing industry, but not currently recyclable.

‘The demand for print providers and their customers to consider the environmental impact of the print they produce is a hot topic and we’ve been in discussions with our customers about the need for this for some years, which until now has seemed unattainable. Now we’re delighted to be able to reveal that, thanks to the dedication and specialist knowledge brought to the table by Blue Castle Group, we can now offer PVC waste recycling to our customers through a one-of-a-kind scheme.’

At Blue Castle’s recycling plant near the company’s head office in Lincolnshire, PVC waste goes through an industrial shredding process to reduce it to a re-processable size. ‘We have extensively tested the PVC banner material, establishing critical elements such as its flash point and chemical properties,’ explained CEO Marie Harley. ‘We’ve explored many options for using the shredded PVC and thanks to strong partner relationships in other sectors, we have developed lines of supply to ensure the processed banner material has viable future uses in a range of industries.’

Print providers and sign makers currently using PVC based substrates are invited to consider the recycling scheme. ‘We would encourage anyone currently offering a PVC banner printing provision to get in touch with  Soyang Europe to discuss how the PVC Recycling Membership Scheme can benefit their printing business,’ said Mr Mashiter.

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Palboard combines the surface of solid PVC with the lightweight characteristics of foam PVC and it is suitable for digital or analogue printing applications.

In addition to its environmental benefits the substrate’s multi-layer composite structure has greater impact resistance than paper based products whilst being lighter than aluminium composite.

It is said to be easy to fabricate and can be cold-bent with a v-groove cut offering versatile structures for retail displays, exhibition graphics and general printing. 

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Foamalux Calibre is designed for a wide range of applications in the print, display and signage sectors. It comes in 1220 x 3050mm sheet sizes and 10, 19 and 30mm thicknesses.

‘Foamalux Calibre is a fantastic addition to an already world-renowned range of PVC substrates,’ said sales director Duncan Smith. ‘At Brett Martin, we actively engage with the world’s top manufacturers of wide format printers to ensure that our range of products is continuously improving and performing to the highest possible standard.’

Simple to cut and rout, Brett Martin describes Foamalux Calibre as having ‘excellent printability and graphics adhesion, an exceptionally hard, silky smooth finish and an extremely lightweight core.’

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By sector, the uptake of digital print technology is more advanced in the various wide-format applications than anywhere else, except perhaps ceramics, which flipped rapidly to digital as soon as speed, quality and reliability issues around digital printing were solved. It has been a similar story with signage and display – the set-up costs of creating large printed products in very small quantities via analogue print technologies, whether via screen or litho printing, meant that as soon as digital devices were able to print onto the same substrates at reasonable speed and with acceptable quality, their higher ink costs quickly paled into insignificance compared to the reduced waste and preparation.

That started happening more than two decades ago, in the mid-1990s, and it is now accepted that more than half of wide-format production is now done using digital printers. One of the most enduring and widespread applications within that is in the production of banners, whether they are the kind that hang outside pubs, hotels or sports clubs, line the crowd barriers at marathons, cycling events, golf tournaments or music festivals, or are the roll-up type that can be taken to presentations and exhibitions, set up and packed away quickly and easily.

ImagePerfect textiles from Spandex suit modular exhibition and display systems

Typically these are made of PVC, which like many plastics that are now coming under increasing scrutiny as a result of public concern about environmental issues, earned its place for otherwise having all the right characteristics: cheap, light, strong, flexible, able to support very good quality print and (sometimes with suitable additional treatments) durable enough for the purpose. Initially it was solvent printed, with inks that would penetrate into the plastic, giving a vibrant and lasting result; subsequent developments in digital print technologies mean that it can also be printed with ecosolvent, UV-curable and latex devices.

Its downside is that it is not so easily recyclable (assuming it is collected in the first place and not just binned on-site) and can only be used for lower-grade purposes, though there are plenty of those, from resilient but yielding playground surfaces to pipes and window frames. As a result of the backlash against plastics, and perhaps in ignorance of these second uses being available, substrate suppliers to the sector are seeing increased demand for alternatives.

‘Demand for PVC is still strong and always will be, for the foreseeable future,’ says Soyang’s UK sales manager Tim Egerton, before adding, ‘but customers do want more environmentally-friendly options, which could be recyclable/ recycled PE (polyethylene) alternatives.’ Increased demand for alternatives like this has seen the price premium for recycled PE material drop from 30% to about 5% and the performance Mr Egerton says is as good as with new. Another area of environmental impact improvement has
been at the manufacturing stage, where reductions in the energy usage and therefore carbon footprint associated with the process have been reduced. In terms of what chemicals are used in manufacture, Mr Egerton says that all material from Soyang meet the EU REACH requirements.

Alterra from Senfa is made of recycled PET bottles and
printable via dye sublimation

Another way

An alternative to looking for materials with a better sustainability story to tell than PVC and its cousins might be to change how certain client needs are met altogether. Mr Egerton cites the example of one customer who was buying self-adhesive PVC rolls to print and mount onto rigid boards but stopped altogether after buying a hybrid printer that could print directly onto the board substrate. Clearly, a rigid board isn’t a banner in any usual sense, and there will be applications for which a flexible finished product that can be hung outdoors via grommets or mounted on poles is the only practical or acceptable option, but it is worth thinking about whether the desired result could be achieved via a different substrate and production route.

This is where textiles increasingly come in. While various meshes and other woven materials are essential for flags and soft signage anyway, the range of applications has grown enormously in the last couple of years. ‘Textile is almost king, it is in vogue in exhibition and retail work and an incredibly wide range of applications, including those that would traditionally have been done with PVC, such as cinema banners, where a 210g warp knitted textile does the job,’ confirms Mr Egerton.

‘Clients are waking up to the advantages – UV or latex print has to be rolled on a core for transport but textiles don’t and exhibition companies are looking for solutions that don’t get “travel sick”,’ he adds.

It is a similar story from Mick Crook, commercial director for the consumables division at EFI Vutek and Mimaki reseller CMYUK. ‘We’ve seen growth again, especially in textiles for specialist décor. In retail display many brands are now going for tension frames rather than sheet cardboard or stuck-on PVC. It looks better and in the larger shops the frames can be changed daily or per campaign rather than closing the store and stripping the walls,’ he says.

He too speaks of huge growth in the exhibition market, and the move towards wrapping walls or panels in printed textiles rather than using plastic cladding. ‘People are asking for textiles if the applications suits it, the environmental stance is more prevalent,’ he adds, noting that the Pongs and Berger ranges of textiles that CMYUK supplies are polyester rather than PVC, though the company does supply PVC under its own brand, which is made in Europe and mostly used in solvent-based printing.

In the warp and weft

Polyester-based textiles work with dye sublimation printers, and this type of textile is what both Soyang and CMYUK supply, not least because it works best with flags. ‘The majority of flags are printed dye-sub because UV or latex sit on the surface, while dye-sub penetrates into the material,’ explains Mr Egerton. Within the dyesub category there are two further distinctions in how the ink is delivered to the fabric: the direct-to-textile approach is favoured for flags, according to Mr Egerton, as it drives the dye further into the fabric, which results in better colour show-through on the reverse. While this approach could not previously deliver the same quality as printing to dye-sub transfer paper and then running printed paper and receiver fabric through a calender to transfer and fix the dye, Mr Egerton says that it has now caught up.

Mr Crook adds that the direct-to-textile mode is generally used but for stretchy fabrics, as are being increasingly used to wrap display stands, the transfer paper and calender route is preferred as the fabric only has to pass through the latter. He says that ongoing developments in the materials are aiming to improve opacity and image quality when stretched or used in block-out applications, and cites Pongs’ Elastico as a good example of this. He says that customers in retail prefer dye-sub print for a more natural look, ‘especially on anything stretchy, pillowcases, flags or voiles’, while exhibition clients tend to go for UV-cured.

Envirotech from Innotech is PVC-free but said to offer similar outdoor durability

As a hardware supplier too, CMYUK also finds that customers are often looking for inline systems, as found in the EFI FabriVu range, rather than having a separate printer and calender, especially if they already have a UV-curing printer: ‘They’re used to having the UV machine and want something similar to stand next to it,’ he comments.

Innotech is another supplier that has seen demand for PVC-free products increase, especially over the last six months, according to marketing manager Kieran Dallow, who says: ‘Our Envirotech PVC-free media range means we can easily fulfil these demands with banner, blockout and mesh materials all made from alternative materials to PVC, yet retaining the durability in both the indoor and outdoor environments that PVC banners have become known for.’ Leon Watson, general manager UK at Spandex says: ‘Digitally printed banners and soft signage applications are one of the fastest growing areas of the market. Spandex delivers a number of banners, ranging from economical 440g products to premium 800g double-sided blockout options.’

He adds, ‘The assumption that there is a high price point for entry into the soft signage market, and in particular textile printing, due to the need to purchase expensive dye sublimation or super-wide format printers is something of the past. We offer a variety of textile materials within our ImagePerfect range, which are suitable for printing on ecosolvent, solvent, UV and latex printers.’

Another PVC alternative comes from French manufacturer Senfa whose Alterra fabric is woven using recycled fibres and then coated to give a smooth printable finish, which the company says ensures “stunning” backlit graphics with all necessary fire retardant properties. The material is made from recycled PET plastic bottles; every tonne of PET bottles that is recycled is said to equate to nearly 2.3 tonnes of CO2 emission reduction.

Senfa also manufactures Sublimis, which won an SGIA award earlier this year. It is a textile material designed for backlit dye-sub imaging but is claimed to be lighter (and thus cheaper to transport) than uncoated alternatives, as well as easier to install. It is also claimed to have excellent light diffusion and like Alterra, is available in the UK through Soyang. dp

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