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Poorly designed packaging is the root-cause of low plastics recycling. Magnomer’s Design2Recycle™ patent pending technology delivers magnetizable coatings on packaging enabling efficient recycling. Our food-safe coatings can be applied to standard packaging such as bottle labels thus transforming them into products which complement magnetic separation equipment widely used by MRFs or reclaimers. Magnomer enhances recycling by easing technological bottlenecks in materials segregation at low cost.

We all recycle plastic bottles. Yet, bottle-to-bottle recycling rate for plastics is less than 1%

Bottles are made of Type 1 PET plastic. As per NAPCOR, the US has 3000 thousand tons (TT) of PET bottles available for recycling. About one third, 900 TT, is captured by recycling facilities. While collection rates need improvement, a larger structural problem exists. Only 17 TT (2% of capture) PET plastic is recycled back to bottles. Contamination is the largest cause of yield loss in the recycle process after bottle capture.

Contamination in PET plastic bales, recovered after capture, is primarily due to labels. Labels on plastic bottles use a plastic resin which chemically differs from bottle PET plastic. Recyclers need to separate the label from the bottle plastic during the recycle process. This separation is extremely inefficient currently.

An obvious cause for such externality is the lack of a Design2Recycle. Plastic bottle packaging is not designed with recyclability in mind.

Magnomer has designed a patent-pending solution to the problem of bottle recyclability. We manufacture a magnetizable coating which can be directly printed on bottle labels using existing printing methods. The coating allows recyclers to separate labels from bottles during recycling using inexpensive magnetic separators.
We supply magnetizable coatings to convertors who print labels for consumer brands demanding bottle recyclability. Our technology is designed to complement current printing and we work with label convertors to meet technical requirements.
Plastic bottles are shred during recycling. A mixture of bottle and label flake resulting after shred can be subjected to widely available inexpensive magnetic separators. Separators will magnetically attract label flake leaving behind high quality bottle-grade plastic PET.

Our approach enables recyclability without supply chain changes. Firstly for recyclers, existing inexpensive magnetic separator can reduce contamination. Secondly, our coatings complement high-speed label printers being operationally equivalent to adding a color during printing. Thirdly, brands can reap marketing and recycled resin cost reduction ROI without operational changes and negligible cost (equivalent to adding a color to label artwork). We meet a critical sustainability initiative without operational headaches.

Contact the Founder:

Ravish Majithia

ravishmajithia@magnomer.com