DEGUMA-SCHÜTZ looking for ways to recycle rubber

In the run up to K 2022, DEGUMA-SCHÜTZ COO Daniela Dingfelder spoke to VDMA about the company’s plans for the trade fair and for sustainability.

Considered indispensable in everyday life, rubber has many advantages in the sustainability field. For example, the long-term applications in automotive applications, the construction industry and consumer goods such as sportswear. But the fact remains that the industry relies on fossil oils in order to manufacture it. So what can the industry do to make rubber a far more sustainable and circular material?

As a Germany-based mechanical engineering company, DEGUMA is focusing at first on improving the environmentally friendly credentials of its machinery. “We have developed a new drive system that enables energy savings of up to 30 per cent,” Dingfelder told VDMA. “We are also switching to a modular design, so that only components and modules need to be replaced rather than the entire machine.”

In giving an example of where this machinery has proven more efficient in manufacturing processes, Dingfelder gave the example of a customer which was able to show savings of 100,000kwh per year in production.

The durability of the machinery is another feather in the sustainability cap: “We currently have a machine from 1937 under revision,” Dingfelder continued. “We can bring these machines up to current technical standards and return them to the market, where they can be used for many years.”

To improve the company’s expertise in modifying its machinery, DEGUMA has co-operated with the German Federal Ministry of education and Research in the AdaptAR project, which aims to digitise technical operating instructions through AR. The paper savings and upskilling of the existing workforce also complementary to industrial sustainability goals.

But what about the industry’s ability to keep rubber in the relevant recycling loops? There are no definitive answers yet, but Dingfeld and her colleagues are working on it. “The negative aspects are that natural rubber is mainly obtained from monocultures,” she said, “while synthetic rubber is based on fossil oil. We need rubber, but we want it to be sustainable. That's why for some time, we've occupied ourselves more intensely with recycling. Together with our customers, we are looking for ways to recycle the material and develop the right machines to do so.”