With this, the Digital Watermarks initiative says it is entering the final phase of R&D trials.

 

The project, according to the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), will set up a pilot market in France in 2024 with the support of Citeo, one of the French EPR organizations, with the aim of proving the sortability of digital watermarks and preparing for market entry. According to the information, brand manufacturers Henkel, L'Oréal and Procter & Gamble (P&G) will equip a large part of their portfolio of rigid HDPE packaging for the French market with digital watermarks in the coming months. After consumer use, the collected post-consumer waste will be taken to a Veolia facility in Brenouille, France, where the watermarking system developed by Pellenc ST and Digimarc is to be used to separate the packaging in the HDPE stream from the non-watermarked packaging waste. To date, seven member companies have joined forces to introduce the technology to the French rigid HDPE packaging market, according to AEPW. Led by the HolyGrail 2.0 (HG2.0) technical team, the tests will also evaluate the technology's ability to detect, sort and reject two types of flexible packaging material - one PP flexibles manufactured by PepsiCo Inc. and the other LDPE flexibles manufactured by Essity and P&G. The granule sorting trials will reportedly be conducted at the Hündgen Entsorgung (Swisstal) materials recovery facility. A three-month sorting trial for hard plastic packaging with a digital watermark, manufactured by several HG2.0 member companies and introduced to the Danish and German markets, is also to start at the same site. The PP film and flexible PE fractions collected at Hündgen Entsorgung will be tested by Borealis, while the testing of the separate non-food PET bottle stream originating from the hard plastic trial will take place at Indorama Ventures' recycling facility in Verdun, France, is said.
 
Sources:

• packaging-journal.de (Oct. 9, 2023)
• Image: © Alliance to End Plastic Waste