Recycling spacers: from offcut to raw material
Sustainability is possible even where you might least expect it at first glance – in the details. At Technoform, this applies to our state-of-the-art warm edge spacers for insulating glass. They are made of polypropylene, stainless steel and wire. Thanks to our EPD, we know exactly that the greatest potential for reducing CO₂ lies in petroleum-based polypropylene.
If recycled material can be used while maintaining consistently high quality, this opens up the prospect of a spacer with a significantly reduced carbon footprint for our customers.
In our own production processes, as well as in our customers’ insulating glass production processes, unavoidable offcuts are generated during cutting to length or as a result of production errors. Although these are high-quality materials, these profiles have often ended up as waste and been incinerated – partly because practical alternatives have been lacking. Due to their metal content, this approach is not only inefficient but also environmentally questionable.
This is exactly where we come in. Our ambition is not to lose valuable materials, but to keep them consistently within the cycle. That is why we collect our own profile offcuts as well as offcuts from pilot customers. A specialised partner company precisely separates the spacer offcuts by material type (polypropylene, stainless steel and wire) – a crucial prerequisite for a genuine circular economy. The goal is to reuse all of them as raw materials and consistently avoid waste.
The recovered polypropylene is particularly exciting for us. Can its cycle be closed and the material used again for spacer production? Our internal tests show that this is fundamentally possible – although the process is demanding. Spacers can be produced using partially or fully recycled polypropylene without compromising their appearance or stability.
Processing spacer offcuts into new granulate requires the utmost care. That is why we work with specialized partners and rely on a precisely coordinated and controlled compounding process. In this way, Technoform ensures that our high quality standards are also met when using recovered materials.
The path ahead is promising. For us, what matters is keeping finite materials in the cycle for as long as possible and taking responsibility for our products throughout their entire life cycle. In this way, we combine technical development with a clear ambition: to conserve resources, reduce environmental impact, protect the climate, gradually reduce CO₂ emissions and find meaningful alternatives to disposal and incineration.
Glass is already being recycled, and we in the spacer industry are ready to get started. When components become circular, it shows just how effective sustainable thinking can be in the details. Together with our customers, we turn valuable raw materials into high-performance products – and pave the way for a circular economy in the window and facade industry.