Circular economy: ExcelRise collects plastic waste at the source and presents its new range of upcycled and recyclable film packaging
Circular economy: ExcelRise collects plastic waste at the source and presents its new range of upcycled and recyclable film packaging
ExcelRise, a flexible packaging and polyethylene film manufacturer, is continuing to develop eco-designed products. With the "Reborn 2025" project, the Group aims at only using polyethylene secondary raw materials (i.e plastic wastes) in all its products. To achieve this, ExcelRise has launched two initiatives:
- XL Recycling, the new subsidiary of the Group, ensuring full traceability of secondary raw materials by collecting them at the source and thus enabling their upcycling in secondary and tertiary films;
- Reborn is the new range of products mainly made from plastic waste collected by XL Recycling and recycled in ExcelRise’s factories.
ExcelRise's commitment to circular economy was very recently acknowledged by the Ellen McArthur Foundation. ExcelRise becomes the first French packaging company to join the "New Plastics Economy" and positions itself as a key player in developing a new circular approach to the plastic economy within the Foundation launched by the navigator.
ExcelRise collects waste at the source and commits to circular economy by upcycling
In France, only 25% of plastic packaging are recycled and polyethylene ("PE") films represent the second largest plastics stream in France and Europe. ExcelRise decided to create XL Recycling, a subsidiary responsible for collecting and purchasing polyethylene film wastes. The Group's ambition is not only recycling but upcycling these secondary resources. While traditional recycling mainly uses this waste in low value-added products such as garbage bags or pipes, upcycling involves recovering secondary materials to convert them into value-added or equivalent products.
Today, ExcelRise upcyles about 10,000 tons a year. With XL Recycling, its ambition is to reach 40,000 tons by 2025. XL Recycling buys and collects polyethylene plastics waste (secondary materials) from manufacturers and distributors – in France and Europe. They are then integrated into films as the main components (i.e. they represent a majority share) in plastic films manufactured by Ceisa and Semo Packaging, flexible packaging companies of the ExcelRise group. The Group is thus part of the circular economy and ensures that all PE plastic wastes are recycled in order to create new products. Waste is the resource of tomorrow and is extremely valuable if properly sorted, collected and processed. This revolution calls for significant investments in selective collection, in R&D to qualify materials as well as in upcyling and manufacturing processes.
0% of virgin material by 2025: ExcelRise’s objective with its Reborn range
The Group, which integrates more and more recycled content into its films, aims at reaching almost 0% virgin material in its products by 2025. To meet the challenge "Reborn 2025", 2 million euros per year are invested by ExcelRise.
Reborn is the trademark of ExcelRise under which its recycled plastics products are marketed. The Group is thus reinforcing its ecodesign approach (use of PE as only material). This goes hand in hand with the extension of the sorting of post-(end) consumer plastic films promoted by eco-organisation such as Eco-Emballages in France and with the trend towards industrial companies sorting and making better use of their wastes.