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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Available from 30 November 2023, and held in the Sustainability Training Room at Fespa UK’s HQ in South Yorkshire, the one-day courses are given by Jon Hutton, Fespa UK’s sustainability lead. They have been designed to either integrate a mixed group of businesses and provide them with the opportunity to network and share ideas, or are adapted specifically to focus on an individual supplier and their products.

Mr Hutton, a recognised figure, industry speaker and advocate for continual improvement of sustainability and the development of a circular economy, said, ‘With retail and consumer focus firmly fixed on the damaging environmental effects of manufacturing around the world, brand owners, print consumers, printers and suppliers are seeing the demand for being more environmentally aware.

‘Customers wanting to know the truth about the sustainability of supplier’s product’s is now high on the agenda, and the truth is often challenging, due to the complexity of graphics materials and the waste and recycling industries limitations. Forthcoming greenwashing regulations have added an extra layer to the whole topic of providing accurate information around the subject. This course will deliver answers to all these areas and give suppliers the confidence they need to address and navigate these subjects of their products and services,’ he added.

Suzi Ward, managing director of Fespa UK, said, ‘Suppliers are in a unique position to offer change; they have a responsibility, and now opportunity, to educate themselves and their customers in sustainability and best practices. We look at the lifecycle analysis of products with them to not only consider material options, but also waste and end-of-campaign. They will attain the knowledge to look at what the client currently has in place and confidently discuss environment impacts.’

The supplier course is relevant to business owners, managers and sales teams. It focuses on the four key product categories that are widely used throughout print, signage and graphics, looking at disposal options for paper and board, ridged plastic, flexible plastic and self-adhesive materials.

Courses will be delivered from 10am to 3pm and will include lunch and an opportunity to network and share ideas.

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An invisible watermark could function rather like a passport for individual packages or prints. At each stage of production, data about the print’s composition could be added to the watermark. When the package reaches end-of-life, the mark can be read and evaluated for sorting into the correct recycling process. There are other benefits, too: the watermark can carry details of the manufacturer, the package’s contents, the types of plastic used (if plastic is used) and the composition of laminates and embellishments. There is no end to the range of data that can be encoded, and this may create new opportunities for supply chain management.

In Europe over 150 companies have come together under the auspices of AIM, the European Brands Association, to assess how such digital technology can improve waste sorting and recycling rates for packaging. Their goal is to establish a circular economy for printed packaging in the EU. The Digital Watermarks Project HolyGrail 2.0 has been set up to prove digital watermarking’s viability for waste sorting and to demonstrate the business case for its wider deployment.

It’s very early days yet and the model depends on various other technologies being in place in supply chains and in waste streams. A standard reader and data format would for instance be required for all recyclers. Recycling technologies would also need upgrading to take advantage of the system. But before that recycling supply chains needs to follow some sort of common process everywhere. But this is never going to happen without commercial incentives, regulation of government intervention. The watermarking thing is a clever idea and one whose time will eventually come. Whether we’ll all still be around to see it is another matter.

– 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, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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The event will kick off with a networking lunch before an afternoon which has deliberately been designed to be more conversational in tone that the ‘age-old format of endless presentations.’ Specifically, a panel of industry experts and successful printers will engage with the audience to answer questions, discuss strategies, and offer insights into their own business models.  

Fespa UK, which brings together the talents of wide-format, digital, textile, industrial and specialist printers across the UK, launched a waste management initiative toward the end of last year. The organisation says that an ‘overwhelming number of printers’ have already registered for the initiative and that March’s event will therefore be an opportunity to move the initiative forward and allow likeminded printers to come together and ‘help to create a real infrastructure for waste collection.’

Suzi Wilkinson, managing director of Fespa UK, commented, ‘This open discussion, is about coming together as a community, making a change together, and making a lasting commitment as an industry for the future. Fespa UK is all about community and if we work together, we are so much stronger, than when we work alone.’

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