PIE: What are the most important trends at the moment in the packaging sector?

Sven Sängerlaub: The subjects that are keeping us busy at the moment are sustainable packaging and more ecologically friendly consumption. Both are associated with the increasing regulation of our industry. In the long term, crude oil and natural gas – the most important plastic raw materials – are finite. This makes the switch to alternative carbon sources for plastics essential, and that in turn will consolidate the trend towards “bio-economisation”. Equally important and of immediate significance are e-commerce and digitalisation.

For me, other important topics in the packaging segment are the increasing cost of raw materials, the growing global competition, and the emergence of international markets like Africa, India and Asia. We must not forget that climate change and global population growth are increasing the demand for durable, and therefore mostly packaged foodstuffs.

PIE: What share does plastic packaging have in the packaging mix in Germany?

Sängerlaub: According to latest statistics, packaging consumption stands at around 230 kg per person per year. Approximately half of this is accounted for by private consumption. Plastic packaging has a share of 20% by weight. That would correspond to around 40 kg per year per person.

PIE: Right now, plastic packaging is having very hard time with consumers. In what areas is it indispensable?

Sängerlaub: I would like to differentiate between conscious perception and subconscious perception. Consumers enjoy the advantages of plastic packaging, for example its tear strength, low weight, water tightness and the longer durability of packaged products. Apart from that, the cost advantages of a plastic pack play an important role when deciding on a purchase, even though people do not like to admit it. Opposition comes from the negative associations that arise, for example, from unbalanced and ideological reports published under the heading “plastic bashing”, but also caused by individual malpractice on the market and wrong incentives. Nevertheless, I am confident that plastics will continue to play a key role in the future – especially as the alternatives are not always better. Many returnable and multiple-use systems are made of plastic, and that speaks for itself.

PIE: Many brand owners want to reduce the use of virgin plastic. There are also a number of regulations at national and EU level. What effect is this having on the plastics industry?

Sängerlaub: The use of recyclate will increase. Packaging will in the future become more and more suitable for recycling. The more the companies commit themselves through their sustainability targets to use recycled material, the greater is the security of investment for dual systems, recyclers and the supplier industry. A major topic is climate change. Climate-unfriendly behaviour is being increasingly sanctioned. Recycling saves resources and reduces the emission of CO₂. The costs of environmental effects have until now been externalised. Here, there is now a trend towards internalisation, which means that plastics will become more expensive.

PIE: As brand owners increasingly replace virgin plastic with recycled material, what problems are expected to arise?

Sängerlaub: Let me turn the question around: what will happen if we don’t switch over? One gram of plastic causes, for production and transport, approximately two grams of CO₂ equivalents with polyolefins. If we incinerate the polymer, an additional three grams of CO₂ equivalents is released. This makes a total of 5 g of CO₂ equivalents per 1 g of plastic. Mechanical recycling causes approximately 0.5 g of CO₂ equivalents. If the plastic is kept in the cycle – in other words recycled – fewer CO₂ equivalents are emitted through incineration. There is no doubt whatsoever that the release of CO₂ will in the future be even more heavily sanctioned. The buzzword here is CO₂ tax.

This means that virgin plastics that are not recycled are likely to become more expensive in the medium term. High-quality recyclate will certainly also become more expensive through the effect of supply and demand, but relatively speaking, their use should be economically worthwhile. In total, I expect a broader implementation of existing technologies and a greater willingness to pay higher prices. From a global point of view, the population is growing, as is prosperity and thus also the use of plastics. The plastics industry will be able to profit from this.

PIE: Who checks whether “sustainability promises” made by brand owners – “to use xx percent recyclate” – are actually being kept?

Sängerlaub: As far as I know, it is not possible at present to directly determine the proportion of recyclate in a product. Calculations are made via material balances, which can then be checked by agencies. In the medium term, it is to be hoped that using recycled plastics is economically more advantageous than using virgin plastics, because the use of recyclate material will then follow economic reason.

PIE: The proportion of plastic litter from private households currently being subjected to material recycling in Germany is only around one third of the total volume. What would have to change to significantly increase this quantity?

Sängerlaub: The calculation is quite simple: if consumers dispose of 70% of a packaging fraction properly, if dual systems sort out 70% of this for recycling, and if recyclers use 70% of this, we would have a recycling quota of approximately one third. If the figure could be raised at each of these stages to 90%, we would get a recycling quota of nearly three quarters.

It can be concluded from this that everyone must make an effort of some kind: producers of packaging products could focus more on “design for recycling”, distributors of plastic packaging could inform buyers better, consumers could learn more about responsible behaviour, the dual systems could improve their sorting systems, recyclers could improve their processing, recyclate users could develop attractive products, the legislator could come up with sensible incentivisation, researchers could continue to devise innovations, and students of relevant subjects could take even more interest in the topic of sustainability. I feel we are on the right track here. We will not save the climate as a result because the packaging industry causes only around 2%-3% of total CO₂ emissions in Germany, but, in view of the fact that Europe has to be climate-neutral by the year 2050, 2%-3% is still quite a lot.

PIE: In 2019, you were appointed as the professor for Packaging Technology at the University of Munich. How do you assess the current situation in Germany regarding qualified young staff for the packaging industry?

Sängerlaub: The demand from industry for qualified and motivated young professionals is greater than can be served by our graduates and those from the other universities in Leipzig, Berlin, Stuttgart and Kempten. In our degree course, Process Engineering Paper and Biofibres, the gap between supply and demand is even larger because the biofibre industry is booming, and packaging paper in particular.

Sven Sängerlaub

Sven Sängerlaub has been the professor of Packaging Technology at the Munich University of Applied Sciences since 2019. After studying packaging technology at HTWK Leipzig, he began his scientific career in 2004 at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging in Freising (IVV, Freising; www.ivv.fraunhofer.de). In cooperation with the chair of Food Packaging Technology, Sängerlaub was awarded his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich. His expertise lies in the research fields of active, intelligent, functional and sustainable packaging as well as barrier and biopolymers.