PET tray recycling guidance in development

Guidelines aimed at boosting the recycling of plastic PET trays are to be drawn up by Plastic Recyclers Europe (EuPR), the organisation has announced.

According to the continental recycling body whose members make up around 80% of the plastics recycling capacity across Europe there has been a significant increase in the use of PET trays by the packaging industry in recent years, with an estimated 700,000 now put on the market each year.

However, EuPR said that poor end-of-life thinking meant this was a painful situation, as the current chemical composition and design of PET bottles and trays makes effective recycling difficult when the two types of products are collected together.

The organisation said: None of the current recycling streams want to have PET trays in their incoming waste. PET recyclers cannot handle them because of their different composition (multi-layers, multi-material combinations etc.) when compared to beverage bottles. Mixed plastics recyclers do not want them because of their incompatibility with polyolefins.

As such, EuPR believes that acting at the design stage of the product and moving towards separate PET trays collections would boost recycling and the PET market.

It has therefore revealed plans to begin developing recycling guidelines for PET trays and also for non-PET trays made of other plastics which have similar recyclability issues.

EuPR said: These first guidelines will enable the value chain to assess the recyclability of the products which are put on the market and move towards recyclable PET trays. In a second step separate sorting streams will have to be created to enable PET tray recycling.

It added: All trays have an important packaging function but need adapt to recyclability requirements in order to grow in the years to come.

UK

UK plastics organisation Recoup estimates that there are around 70,000 tonnes of PET trays collected in the UK each year, with some of this material used in rPET production.

And, while Recoup believes separate collections of PET trays and bottles is preferable, it has questioned EuPRs claims that the materials cannot be recycled effectively together, previously arguing that the products are often processed together in rPET plants in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story).

Commenting on the proposed guidance, Paul East, packaging technologist at Recoup, said: “Evidence shows that there are strong markets in the UK and Europe for polypropylene pots, tubs and trays, if material of a suitable specification can be supplied to reprocessors. Collection of household Pots, Tubs and Trays has risen significantly since 2007, with over 60% of UK local authorities collecting this material as part of their kerbside collection service. PP is a common polymer within this fraction.

“At present, PET from soft drink bottles is recycled into a range of applications including fibre and new packaging, and the key barrier to increased recycling rates is not enough collection of this valuable material. Whilst it is not as simple as combining the PET bottles and trays together and recycling them, there is however a requirement to ensure that this PET tray material can be viably recycled in a commercially sensible way. This will also be necessary to help meet the new increased recycling targets for plastic packaging.

“To that end, when RECOUP published a revised version of Recyclability By Design in September 2013, part of the revised document included a split of the PET recyclability tables, from what was one table, to become two separate tables, one for PET Bottles and one for PET trays.”