CEPI, the European Confederation of the Paper Industry, launched a consultation period on 20 October, which will end on 6 November, for the first draft scheme for measuring recyclability, a harmonized method at European level.
The draft scheme refers only to laboratory practice (UNI 11743:2019 for Italy, since 2019) and does not include the evaluation system (which for Italy remains and will remain the Aticelca 501 System).
Thanks to this harmonized laboratory method it will be easier to develop products suitable for recycling throughout the European market.
The laboratory method scheme was developed by a group of French, English, Italian and German experts; the Aticelca experience and UNI 11743:2019 were used as a starting point.
Aticelca and three Italian laboratories have participated in the project, that has been developed over the last year to arrive at this first proposal.
As for the Aticelca system, the scheme proposed by CEPI aims to define a laboratory procedure that enables to simulate the main phases of the industrial recycling process, according to the most widely used technologies (low density pulping, depuration, sheet formation) and to measure the pulpability of paper products, the ability to obtain suitable fibers for a new sheet of paper, the coarse reject, interference caused by adhesive particles and other visual interference to enable the design of increasingly efficient paper-based products and packaging to be recycled.
The objective of CEPI is to have a laboratory method harmonized at European level as soon as possible, and to keep it updated over time, in order to follow the technological development of recycling processes and the continuous innovation of paper products.
ECOLSTUDIO is one of the three laboratories that have participated in the Working Group.
