Digimarc Accelerates the Global Fight Against Plastic Pollution
22 Februar 2024 - 2:00PM
Business Wire
Digimarc Recycle is Now Widely Available and
Easily Accessible to Unlock Plastic Circularity Worldwide
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC), the pioneer and global
leader in digital watermarking technologies, today announced the
wide availability and easy accessibility of Digimarc Recycle
following successful pilots and testing in multiple countries
worldwide. Digimarc Recycle represents a revolution in the
sortation and recycling of plastic waste with the power to
measurably advance the fight against plastic pollution, and this
proven technology is now available for license by qualified
partners for less than $1 per capita per year.
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the full release here:
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Digimarc accelerates the global fight
against plastic pollution. Digimarc Recycle is now widely available
and easily accessible to unlock plastic circularity worldwide --
available for license by qualified partners for less than $1 per
capita per year. (Graphic: Business Wire)
“After another year plagued with a lot of talk but little action
in the fight to end plastic pollution, we are expanding our reach
across stakeholders and geographies to encourage partners in the
United States and around the world to join us on our mission to
protect the planet,” said Digimarc President and CEO, Riley
McCormack. “With today’s announcement, the technology proven to
effect change is both accessible and affordable to a wide variety
of partners across the recycling ecosystem without further
delay.”
The Plastic Recycling Outlook
In the United States, the current ecosystem of plastics
recycling does not work, as only 5-9% of plastics are fully
recycled in the U.S. annually,1 which means that almost all
plastics in the U.S. are discarded as waste.2 In 2021 alone, 51
million tons of plastic waste were generated in the U.S.3
One of the main reasons the world struggles to recycle plastic
is due to the number of plastic variants that are created by
industry and the limits of the optical sorting technology that
exists at recycling facilities. Plastic packaging spans a huge
range of types – from food- or skin-contact-grade to industrial-use
plastics – and often contains multiple materials and layers,
further compounding the challenges of sorting today. Current
sorting technology can only identify, at a high level, some of the
materials in each item, but it cannot identify the grade or complex
composition of much of the material it works to sort. This means
that it cannot sort based on specifications that would allow
plastics to retain the value required to become truly circular –
for example, determining if a plastic is food-grade. This
disincentivizes producers to purchase and use recycled plastic as
they are unable to acquire the plastic varieties and specifications
they need.
Digimarc Recycle changes this dynamic by linking covert digital
watermarks applied to plastic packaging to product information,
including packaging composition, food or non-food grade plastic,
product variant, brand, SKU, and more. Deploying digital
watermarking, instead of solely relying on optical sortation, helps
to create the variety, volume, and quality of recycled plastics
needed for a viable circular economy to flourish. Roland Berger
highlights Digimarc’s technology, digital watermarks, as a sorting
technology that can “substantially improve the yield and quality of
recyclates” – calling recyclates the “new gold.”4
Digimarc Recycle powers precise granular sortation of plastics,
thereby increasing the opportunity for producers to purchase and
repurpose higher quality recycled plastic that can compete on a
level playing field with virgin materials. Digimarc’s digital
watermarking technology makes this possible by identifying plastic
packaging deterministically to any desired level of granularity
including brand, SKU, SKU-variant, batch/lot, or even serialized
item, none of which can be accomplished with current optical
sorting technology or other proposed next-generation technologies.
The application of Digimarc Recycle helps disincentivize the
continued use of virgin plastics by producers and makes extended
producer responsibility (EPR) schemes a more viable option to
tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution.
“If we want producers to buy recyclate instead of continuing to
use virgin plastic, we must improve the quality of plastic output
at today’s recycling facilities and offer a real opportunity for
closed-loop recycling. This is where Digimarc can help,” said
McCormack. “Digital watermarking is a powerful, proven, and
incredibly affordable solution to the plastic pollution crisis, and
it is available today. We can talk about potential solutions, or we
can commit to action. Our offer to license our groundbreaking
technology to partners around the world underscores our belief that
the time to act is now.”
Learn more about Digimarc Recycle at Digimarc.com or contact us
at product@digimarc.com.
About Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC) is the pioneer and global
leader in digital watermarking technologies. For nearly 30 years,
Digimarc innovations and intellectual property in digital
watermarking have been deployed at massive scale for the
identification and the authentication of physical and digital
items. A notable example of this is our partnership with a
consortium of the world’s central banks to deter counterfeiting of
global currency. Digimarc is also instrumental in supporting global
industry standards efforts spanning both the physical and digital
worlds. In 2023, Digimarc was named to the Fortune 2023 Change the
World list and honored as a 2023 Fast Company World Changing Ideas
finalist. Learn more at Digimarc.com.
____________________
1
Plastics: Material-specific data
| US EPA. (n.d.).
2
Sullivan, L. (2022, October 24).
Recycling plastic is practically impossible - and the problem is
getting worse. NPR
3
Budryk, Z. (2022) US only
recycled 5 percent of plastic waste in 2021: Greenpeace report, The
Hill.
4
Herweg, 0., Popa, D. (2023, March
15). Plastic Recyclates create new business opportunities for
sector. Roland Berger
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240222238789/en/
Media Contacts: Susan Baldwin Digimarc Corporation
509-939-1137 PR@digimarc.com Anneka Kumli Grove Partners
720-422-5258 anneka@thegrovepartners.com
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