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Sustainability in the plastics industry
The Austrian machine manufacturer Starlinger released its second sustainability report after 2022.“Starlinger is one of the medium-sized Austrian companies that has been fulfilling its social responsibility in a variety of ways for a long time,”explained Ilona Wimmer, head of the CSR department at Starlinger.
“We published our first sustainability report in 2022 – an analysis of our status quo in the area of CSR and sustainability at the time. Based on this, we defined measures, many of which are currently being implemented or have already been completed. The present report provides an overview of what has happened at Starlinger over the last two years in terms of sustainability and CSR.”
In addition to a materiality analysis, in which internal and external stakeholders gave their assessments on a total of 18 sustainability topics, the new sustainability report includes detailed analyses of energy consumption, emissions and waste generation in the company, as well as information on the energy-saving measures implemented.
In the social area, the “Fit & X’sund Weissenbach” project has been addressing the issue of health and satisfaction in the workplace since 2023. Starlinger also supports sustainability-oriented research projects by associations and research institutions; among others, Starlinger currently collaborates with the Josef Ressel-Zentrum for Recovery Strategies for Textiles (ReSTex) at the Biotech Campus Tulln (part of the Wiener Neustadt University of Applied Sciences) on a project for the recycling of clothing and textiles made from cotton-polyester blends.
“Especially in the plastic packaging industry it is very important to ‘live’ sustainability both internally and externally,” said Angelika Huemer, managing partner of Starlinger & Co Gesellschaft.
”As a machine manufacturer, we design the production processes of our systems in a way that allows our customers to produce with as few resources and emissions as possible – be it woven plastic bags that can be used several times and are easy to reclaim, or recycled plastics that is returned to the product cycle this way. For us, used plastics are not waste, but a valuable raw material for new products.”
The CSR department at Starlinger is headed by Ilona Wimmer since August 2024. Together with her team she is responsible for initiating and implementing various projects in this area. Having worked for the company for over 20 years – previously in Controlling – Wimmer took over from Clarissa Graf, who has built up and managed the CSR and sustainability department at Starlinger since 2019.