Clean Site Circulair

Reuse of packaging film from building-sites

Valipac is a Belgian company that was founded in 1997 to stimulate and coordinate the recycling of commercial packaging.

With the Clean Site Circular demonstration project, we want to demonstrate that PE film packaging waste on building sites can be recycled locally, specifically into shrink sleeves for the packaging of building materials. This project was part of our Clean Site System, launched in 2005 to increase the collection of packaging film waste from construction sites and return it to the building materials dealer.

Until 2017, most of this waste was still sent to China for further recycling. As a result, we did not have enough outlets for high-quality applications for the recycled raw material, and the demand for local recycling was not stimulated. By creating an application, we can increase that demand and take a big step towards a circular system.

In cooperation with the project partners, we created a PE compound consisting of 50% recycled PE films and a PE booster polymer (developed by Total Polymers). With this material, we produced shrink sleeves for the packaging of building materials.

The project thus demonstrates that a circular system for PE films can work. One of the project partners, Wienerberger, has already partly replaced its standard shrink sleeves for packaging bricks with recycled sleeves, which amounts to around 23 tonnes of recycled sleeves annually.