Biodegradable hygiene products

The WC at home is often used to dispose of items other than toilet paper: fabric items and wipes for cosmetics, personal care and hygiene that really do not belong in there. These moist wipes are broken down very poorly in water, so they get into the drainage system, and from there to the wastewater treatment plants, where they form enormous clumps and have to be removed at great effort and expense. The hygiene product manufacturers which produce these wipes from nonwoven materials are therefore working with system builders like Andritz Küsters GmbH in Krefeld to develop alternatives. Managing Director Andreas Lukas explains how the committed VDMA member specialising in processes and machine systems for paper finishing and nonwoven production is improving the environmental tolerability of hygiene products.

Why do these kinds of nonwoven products not break down more readily?
Most damp wipe cloths have synthetic fibres embedded in them, so they are very poorly soluble, if at all. It must also be remembered that hygiene products for the face and body are often impregnated with lotions, fragrances for example. Given the situation of collapsing wastewater systems and increasingly stringent standards for drinking water quality, we are no longer dealing with an exclusively financial question ? purifying wastewater is immensely expensive ? but also an ecological problem which is becoming more urgent as the demand for moist wipes increases. Our engineers have been wrestling with the question of environmentally friendly nonwovens for some years now.

With the result that your systems can now manufacture degradable, ?flushable wipes?. Was this a home-grown idea?
Not entirely. The new development emerged from our dialogue with customers. As a builder of systems, some of which are designed for processing nonwovens, since 2002 we have also been affiliated with EDANA, the umbrella organisation for the European nonwoven industry.

Years ago, at a trend forum held under the auspices of EDANA, the hygiene product manufacturers voiced their concern that non-flushable wipes might become a major headache in terms of environmental burden. Since our machines are supplied to practically every leading manufacturer of hygiene articles in the world and our systems are used for processing nonwoven webs, of course we immediately asked ourselves: What can we do to ensure that these items are eliminated in an environmentally friendly manner?

So a joint development project was born among the Andritz sister corporations, Perfojet, Asselin-Thibeau (both French) and Küsters. How is it progressing?
The starting situation was as follows: There are three properties in conventional wipes that render them unsuitable for flushing: The fact that they are made from synthetic fibres, the use of chemical binding agents, and thermal bonding. All three make the products less readily degradable. So we addressed each aspect individually and tested them for improvement options: Regarding materials, instead of synthetic fibres we now use wetlaid nonwovens made from degradable cellulose fibres, such as are used to make tea bags among other things. It is well known that these materials can be disposed of with organic waste. Instead of the usual binders and their thermal bonding, our systems work with chemical-free hydroentanglement, also called ?Wetlace?. At the end, we have nonwoven products like moist toilet paper and cosmetic wipes that dissolve in water quickly and completely.

Your ?Wetlace? line was conceived not only to create a sustainable end product, but also to do justice to the ?machinery footprint?. What is meant by that in real terms?
This is the respons