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Achieving a fully circular economy with maximum recovery rates is very important for the future of sustainable manufacturing. Unfortunately, packaging often hinders recycling because it contains elements that cannot be recycled and is difficult to separate from recyclable materials. Magnomer is an innovative packaging material start-up company that is using magnetizable ink to remove these impurities and achieve more thorough recycling.

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The production of raw plastic raw materials will generate a lot of carbon emissions and other toxins that penetrate the environment. If these raw materials are used for packaging and then discarded, they will destroy ecosystems in land, rivers and oceans. This harms humans and non-human animals that consume food and water from degraded ecosystems, and destroys habitats.

Magnomer's magnetic ink innovation can reduce the environmental impact of plastic pollution by ensuring that more plastic is recycled and reducing production.

Despite the technology and public willingness to recycle more bottles in the past few decades, only 6% of plastic bottles are currently recycled back into bottles.

This is partly due to the lack of joint efforts between manufacturers, retailers, waste collectors and the recycling industry. All of their activities can lead to plastic problems, and collective joint actions can make significant progress in solving this problem.

The fact that the packaging of plastic bottles hinders effective recycling is a symptom of a lack of joint thinking. Recently, the idea of ​​a "circular economy" has become popular among researchers and industry leaders seeking to solve the plastic problem.

The circular economy approach recognizes the benefits of joint thinking to improve recycling. It comprehensively solves the plastic problem by studying how different manufacturing, retail, and waste collection methods can achieve better recycling. Better recycling makes the manufacturing industry more sustainable, the retail industry more sustainable, and so on.

Conic: Replacing plastic with wooden formable packaging solutions

Due to new regulations and the increasing importance of sustainability in consumer decision-making, consumer brands have adopted this approach. But an effective transition to a circular economy requires new technologies that can be rapidly expanded and widely applied.

Magnomer has employees in Boston, USA and Mumbai, India. It was founded in 2016 by materials scientist Ravish Majithia. He previously discovered that the root cause of the low recycling rate is low classification efficiency.

Majithia had an idea of ​​using magnetic marking to improve recycling and sorting, and recommended it to his best friend and polymer expert Vishal Salian. Majithia and Salian jointly developed the initial prototype of this technology, which will become Magnomer's flagship product in 2016. They tested it at home to verify Majithia's idea that the use of magnetized ink in packaging applications can improve recyclability.

In 2017, ink chemist Kumaril Kapadia joined the couple and he helped the company develop its unique Magmark magnetized ink products.

The magnetic ink products produced by Magnomer can eliminate the key barriers to the recycling of plastic consumer packaging. Major global brands such as Pepsi and Fuji Seal have participated in the Magnomer pilot.

Video source: Innovation Studio/Youtube.com

The EU’s single-use plastics guidelines require the lowest recycled plastic content in packaging, and the United States will soon introduce similar regulations. However, due to the inefficient recycling infrastructure, there is a shortage of recycled plastic stocks.

Magnomer's magnetized ink technology is designed to enable consumer brands to meet these requirements. The embedded design of the product makes it easier for customers to switch, making it suitable for many supply chains transitioning to a circular economy.

Magnomer claims that its products—applied to circular economy transformation projects to address materials and waste streams as a whole—can enable organizations to surpass these new European and US regulatory requirements for single-use plastics

The magnetized ink developed by Magnomer can be printed on packaging materials like any other color. This means that they provide a scalable solution that can help accelerate the pace of achieving a circular economy.

The industrial recycling process involves grinding the packaging into small flakes, which can be melted for further processing. Before Magnomer intervened, the labels grinded with these flakes would produce impurities, making recycling more complicated and inefficient.

Plastic substitutes: where are we now?

Magnetized ink means that ordinary magnets can be used to remove the label from the packaging, leaving only the pure packaging flakes. The ink can be applied to various resins and packaging types, and can be easily combined with today's industry standard printing processes.

Magnets have been used in recycling operations to remove ferrous metals from waste streams, which means that Magnomer's solutions have also been used in the recycling industry and manufacturing.

The company's first pilot was to use shrink sleeve labels on PET bottles, but Magnomer claims that its products can be seamlessly integrated into various current packaging applications. Magnomer said that through the use of magnetized ink labels, recycling of HDPE bottles, sorting multilayer films, and recycling of aluminum cans can all be improved.

"Ink that can be magnetized to increase the recovery rate." (2020.) Sitra. Available at: https://www.sitra.fi/en/cases/ink-that-can-be-magnetised-for-enhanced-recycling/.

Paben, J. (2020). "Attractive innovation: Magnets help solve bottle recycling barriers." Plastic recycling update. Available at: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2020/02/18/attractive-innovation-magnets-help-on-bottle-recycling-obstacle/.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those expressed by the author in a personal capacity, and do not necessarily represent the views of the owner and operator of this website, AZoM.com Limited T/A AZoNetwork. This disclaimer forms part of the terms and conditions of use of this website.

Ben Pilkington is a freelance writer interested in society and technology. He likes to understand how the latest scientific developments affect us and imagine what might happen in the future. Since completing his postgraduate studies at Oxford University in 2016, Ben has reported on the development of computer software, the UK technology industry, digital rights and privacy, industrial automation, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, sustainability and clean technology.

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