The state of Upper Austria has recognised Engel Austria's commitment to building up a circular economy for plastics with the Upper Austrian Environmental Award 2021. Awards were given for a total of five sustainable climate ideas, including the skinmelt technology developed by Engel for processing recycled plastic waste.
The idea behind the circular economy is ensuring that plastic products no longer end up in the environment. The aim is to globally create the conditions needed for collecting and processing plastic waste and using it to manufacture new products. "Plastics are valuable raw materials," as Günther Klammer, Vice President Recycling at Engel, headquartered in Schwertberg, emphasises, going on to underline the contribution the injection moulding machine manufacturer makes to the circular economy. "We develop technologies that enable recycled materials to be processed for an increasingly wide range of applications and increasingly high-quality products."
One example is the skinmelt technology, which won the state prize. The process is used to create sandwich products. Sandwich means that only the surface consists of virgin plastic material with recycling material underneath. In this way, processed plastic waste can also be used to manufacture products with strict surface quality requirements. At the same time, skinmelt allows higher proportions of recycled material than other sandwich processes.
One idea better, one step ahead – this was the motto of the Upper Austrian Environmental Award 2021. All told, there were more than 60 contributions, of which the five best won awards.
