Werner & Mertz and PreZero working together to advance the circular economy
Joint appearance at BDE event to kick off cooperation
Right on time for the BDE (Bundesverband der Entsorger) “Circular Economy Day” on June 5, the Mainz cleaning products manufacturer Werner & Mertz and PreZero, the environmental services provider of the Schwarz Group, announce the start of their cooperation. Within the scope of the Recyclate Initiative founded by Werner & Mertz in 2012, PreZero is now a new cooperation partner for the licensing of the manufacturer’s award-winning, recyclable packaging made from recyclate. In their strategic partnership, the two companies want to counteract the raw materials shortage in the recyclate area, promote the use of recyclate in general, and continue expanding the circular economy. The successful implementation of their first concrete project was introduced at the BDE event.
Best Case: Detergent bottle of 100 percent rHDPE
The three-liter detergent bottle from the Frosch brand for the French market—where the brand is Rainett—contains 100 percent rHDPE from the Yellow Bag. In one of its highly modern recycling facilities in the Rhineland-Palatinate city of Grünstadt, PreZero makes available suitable plastic from household waste. From the resulting recyclate the packaging manufacturer Frielinghaus produces the bottles that Werner & Mertz then fills with Frosch cleaning agents at its prodution center in Mainz.
“We are pleased that we have found in PreZero a strong and competent partner to help us carry on our Recyclate Initiative. PreZero perfectly realizes the idea behind the high-quality circular economy of making new packaging out of used packaging from Yellow Bag waste,” says Timothy Glaz, Head of Corporate Affairs at Werner & Mertz.
Next projects in the planning stage
Implementation of the idea will now be developed systematically. In future, PreZero plans to provide larger amounts of HDPE recyclate in order to broaden the product portfolio. That secures the continuous availability of the material and thus fulfills a core requirement for planning certainty and scalability of the production of more plastic bottles. Moreover, the circular value chain counts on the foresighted securing of raw materials, a central topic in the sustainability strategy of Schwarz Group companies. “For us, a secure supply of raw materials begins not with the production line, but rather with a shared understanding of closed loops. With Werner & Mertz we have a partner at our side that also thinks holistically and follows the same vision. That pleases us immensely,“ says Dietmar Böhm, Executive Board Member Dual, Intragroup, Services & New Business at PreZero International.
The partnership is to be expanded by its digital orientation. To push the digital packaging transformation ahead, Werner & Mertz plans to capture data via SPOT, the digitalization tool from ProZero in cooperation with Packaging Cockpit. This knowledge transfer, which takes place within the entire industry, offers all participants a better way to exchange information and more chances to bring about forward-looking changes.
Recyclate Initiative celebrates a record: one billion bottles of 100 percent PCR
In 2012 Werner & Mertz launched the Recyclate Initiative with cooperation partners along the entire value chain with the goal of advancing high-quality recycling of plastic from household waste collections like the Yellow Bag through the use of mechanical recycling. From that point on, the initiative has succeeded many times over. In 2014 Frosch launched dishwashing detergent in the first rPET bottles of 100 percent Post-Consumer Recyclate (PCR), 20 percent of which was from the Yellow Bag. Since then the use of material obtained from the Yellow Bag has been increased continuously. For example, since 2016 rHDPE bottles of 100 percent recyclate from the Yellow Bag have been used for emsal and Green Care Professional brand products. In rPET bottles for the Frosch brand, the share of material from the Yellow Bag was increased from 20 to 50 percent in 2021 and from 50 to 75 percent in 2023. A new record will be set on 23 June 2025 when Werner & Mertz reaches one billion rPET bottles of 100 percent PCR within the scope of the initiative.There’s even more. With PreZero as its cooperation partner, Werner & Mertz is planning the next milestone in the spirit of the circular economy.
