The Mainz-based detergent manufacturer Werner & Mertz has been honoured with the German Packaging Award 2021 in the Sustainability category for increasing the proportion of recyclate from the Yellow Bag to 50 % in its PET bottles made of 100 % used plastic. Together with cooperation partner ALPLA, the seemingly impossible was achieved in 2021 and the first bottles have been in use for the Frosch brand since March.
„Werner & Mertz is consistently pursuing its goal of a bottle with the highest possible proportion of PCR from the Yellow Bag and has been able to increase the proportion of recyclate from 20 % to 50 % without the material showing strong discolouration or losing its transparency. The effort required to obtain the rPET during sorting in the Yellow Bag disposal process is significantly higher and more complex than for material from the beverage bottle collection. This makes the bottle a pioneer in terms of the amount of rPET from PCR from the Yellow Bag or Yellow Bin“
Jury statement
Werner & Mertz, together with ALPLA and other cooperation partners along the entire value chain, launched the Recyclate Initiative in 2012 and since then has been committed to ensuring that plastic from end consumer collections (post-consumer recyclate, or PCR for short) is reprocessed and reused as a high-quality recyclable material after use and thus remains in the cycle. In 2014, the Frosch brand PET bottles were successfully converted to 100% PCR, 20% of which came from the Yellow Bag source. The remaining 80% comes from the European beverage bottle collection (bottle to bottle). Over 499 million such bottles have been placed on the market to date.
Source: Werner and Mertz
