From rubber to engineering polymers: plastics. No other material has seen as many innovations over the past 300 years as this omnipresent base material, from which almost any form can be created with desired thermal and elastic properties. In the mid-20th century, plastics experienced their very own renaissance. From that point onwards, ever new variants have been produced through chemical synthesis, and to this day they have become indispensable in our daily lives. Advanced plastics have enabled us to reach space, and on their basis we are able to replace even parts of the human body. Yet they also serve the most ordinary purposes — we find them in food packaging, toothbrushes, and televisions.
Edelmann Kunststoffe
is an owner-managed
company represented
by Tino Edelmann.
However, this dream material also has another side. Plastics are synthesised from finite raw materials such as crude oil, natural gas, or coal, and most of them are not biodegradable. On the contrary: the diversity of plastics now in circulation not only complicates their landfill disposal or incineration in waste-to-energy plants, but also their secondary and tertiary recycling. In many cases, the recycling of plastics must be preceded by a laborious sorting process, which still today is largely carried out manually. In Germany alone, 5,920,000 tonnes of plastic waste were generated in 2015, with the trend still rising. However, the plastics manufacturing and processing industries were able to reuse 46% of this material for production or as raw materials.*
Since 2006, Edelmann Kunststoffe has been returning plastic production residues to the industrial reprocessing cycle in production-specific quality grades. Our supply programme mainly includes regrind and regranulates. In this way, we ensure the utilisation and precise processing of customer-specific production residues and their reintegration into the production cycle. With the aid of additives and auxiliary materials (masterbatches), we are able to supply the industry with plastics possessing almost any desired thermoplastic property. Whether reprocessed material or virgin resin, semi-finished product or raw material — ask us, we l(i)ve plastics!