— By Plasteurope.com staff — 

The initiative Erntekunststoffe Recycling Deutschland (Erde, Bad Homburg, Germany; www.erde-recycling.de) said it collected and recycled 36,903 t of silage and stretch film at 694 stationary and 3,402 mobile collection points last year. This corresponds to a recycling feed rate of 71.4% of the film placed on the market in Germany in this sector, according to Erde.

For comparison, in 2023, 35,514 t of film were taken back at 645 stationary and 3,147 mobile collection points.

In addition to this, 3,037 t of baling twine, bale nets, asparagus/hole films, nonwovens and mulch/greenhouse films were collected and mechanically recycled last year.

The initiative, which was launched eleven years ago by plastic packaging industry association IK (Bad Homburg; www.kunststoffverpackungen.de), added polyethylene drip tubing to its recycling range in 2024. As of this year, agricultural packaging such as big bags, paper and film packaging, and greenhouse film have also been included in the collection fractions.

Related: Erde announces new voluntary recycling quotas for agricultural plastics

The take-back initiative, to which 28 member companies have now signed up, is based on a voluntary commitment initially addressed to the German federal ministry for the environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection BMUV (Berlin; www.bmuv.de) and renewed in 2023.

It defines collection rates of more than 60% for asparagus film by 2026 and 75% for silage and stretch film by 2027.

“Erde is a good example of voluntary environmental responsibility in practice,” emphasised IK economics expert Laura Müller.

Meanwhile, the Swiss arm of Erde increased the volume of recycled agricultural plastics by 15% to 2,500 t. The voluntary take-back system, in which – as in Germany – RIGK (Wiesbaden, Germany; www.rigk.de) acts as the system operator, has significantly expanded the number of collection points in its third year of existence, particularly in Romandy (i.e. French-speaking Switzerland) and in the canton of Ticino, though no concrete figures were provided. According to RIGK reports, only around a third of used silage films are recycled in Switzerland.

— Translated by Elspeth Lenhard