Recycling - chainge - Going Circular

igus Wins Recycling Competition "Going Circular"??

With the “chainge" #recycling program and the igus:bike, two finalists in the competition at once.

Saving plastics from incineration and integrating them into a circular economy: With its unique #chainge program for recycling technical plastics, igus GmbH has won 1st place in the "Going Circular" competition held by the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce ( IHK K?ln ). In addition, the igus:bike also made it to the finals - a bicycle made entirely from recycled plastic.

Double Reason Being Happy

The Cologne-based plastics specialist has made it to the finals of "Going Circular" twice. A competition that the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce organized for the third time in the meantime, together with the VDI K?lner Bezirksverein e.V. , the VDE Cologne, the :metabolon research and innovation center and patron and NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur . In the final round, the recycling program "chainge" finally prevailed over six competitors. "We are proud of this award. It is the merit of a strong team and shows us once again that we are on the right track to transfer technical plastics into an environmentally friendly recycling economy and thus conserve valuable resources," says Michael Blass , Managing Director of #echains (energychain sysystems) at igus. The recycling program had already won the Rhineland Business Award in September 2022. "It is the innovative power of entrepreneurs that finds solutions, applies them and passes them on. This is how global climate protection can succeed," said IHK Vice President Sven Gebhard during his laudatory speech. The aim is to raise awareness of the megatopic of the circular economy. And to motivate other companies to look for ways to conserve resources themselves.

?Digital platform makes plastics recycling even easier

"What happens to our products at the end of their life?" This question was the impetus for igus to launch the "chainge" program in 2019. For so-called post-consumer plastics, there is often still a lack of opportunities for #sustainable reuse, so they end up in incineration.

A linear economy that igus wants to put an end to with "chainge". Since the start of the initiative, customers can send their discarded energy chains to igus independently of the manufacturer and have them recycled so that new products can be created from them.

For example, the cradle-chain E2.1.CG from igus, the first energy chain made of recycled plastic. To accelerate the transformation to a circular economy, igus expanded its offering in October 2022 with the "chainge" online platform. Users can use it to transfer not only energy chains, but also other components made of other #engineering plastics such as PA, POM and PBT to the circular economy. At the same time, the platform provides a digital marketplace that allows access for purchasing selected #recyclates.

"Since the launch in 2019, more and more companies have been using our recycling program," says a delighted Lena Engel , head of the chainge business unit. "We have now saved around 85 tons of plastic from incineration and transferred it to the circular economy. We are also working on including more sites and expanding our recycling network. So, we will gain additional capacity that will enable us to make an even greater contribution to the sustainable circular economy."