Designed for recyclability: Petcore Europe eyes total circularity with new guidelines

04 Dec 2018 --- Petcore Europe and Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) have published guidelines for manufacturers and suppliers to produce fully recyclable PET thermoformed trays. The report hopes to extend the success of PET bottles’ high recycling rates in Europe to PET trays, as well as increase the use of recyclate. PET-based trays already contain an average of 55 percent recycled plastics, but full circularity is the goal.

“We already have an impressive success story with PET bottles. In countries like Germany and Finland, the collection and recycling rate is far beyond 90 percent. Our goal is now to make all PET packaging material circular and recycle 100 percent of all collected PET packaging by 2030,” Christian Crépet, Executive Director of Petcore Europe, tells PackagingInsights.

UK plastics recycling company Veolia has recently called for standardized packaging which makes products recyclable by design, in order to streamline the process and boost low recycling rates. 

Trays made out of PET sheet are suitable for numerous applications. This can range from fresh food and dairy packaging, for example, such as fresh meats and pasta, to blister packaging used in body care. Even medical packaging, for products including tablets, can use PET trays.

There is a growing trend in the collection of PET trays for specific recycling activities, notes Petcore Europe. However, besides separate collection and proper sorting of trays and other PET sheet-based products, design for recycling is a significant tool to boost their circularity.

“In the early days of Petcore Europe, we already gave guidelines to EU Member States and their Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes to ensure good collection and sorting. This was reinforced by the European PET Bottle Platform’s (EPBP) design for recycling of PET bottles. The idea is now to align PET trays and bottles which have been highly successful. Today, all PET beverage bottles are eco-designed for recycling,” Crépet adds.

What do the guidelines say?
The guidelines give three options:

• Yes: Full compatibility – materials that passed the testing protocols with no negative impact or materials that have not been tested yet, but are known to be acceptable in PET recycling.
• Conditional: Limited compatibility – materials that passed the testing protocols if certain conditions are met or materials that have not been tested yet, but pose a low risk of interfering with PET recycling.
• No: Low compatibility – materials that failed the testing protocols or materials that have not been tested, but post a high risk of interfering with PET recycling.

The three options can then be checked against a range of packaging characteristics, such as label adhesive, additives, colors and packaging material. In this way, manufacturers can ideally pick the packaging characteristics that fall within the “Yes” lane to design PET trays optimized for the recycling stream.

To give an example, a tray that would fall firmly within the “Yes” option would be made from PET, be transparent in color and have a PET-based oxygen scavenger barrier. The adhesives used for parts different than lidding films or labels would be water or alkaline soluble.

Crépet makes it clear that the guidelines are working documents that are are subject to continuous updates.

More specifically, “Currently ‘delaminating PET/PE’ trays are mentioned as conditionally accepted. This is, however, problematic and needs review. The issue is that today sorting centers and recyclers cannot distinguish between PET/PE and Mono-PET trays in the sorting procedure,” notes Crépet.

However, the guidelines need more extensive support to ensure circularity of the industry, such as the help of EU policymakers to lead EU harmonized collection and sorting of PET packaging, notes the spokesperson.

The guidelines may be crucial for manufacturers and suppliers aiming to avoid the proposed UK plastic tax on packaging that contains less than 30 percent recycled content.

Clearer guidelines could also increase the quality of UK recyclate, which has fallen dramatically in terms of quality.

“In theory, there should be more recyclate coming in than ever before, but unfortunately, the quality is going down based on the fact that consumers are throwing every type of plastic into the recycling bin,” Kenton Robbins, the Managing Director of PFF, the UK’s largest independent producer of thermoformed plastic for food packaging tells PackagingInsights.

A further move should be to increase the use of certain types of plastic that are more easily recycled. These are PET, PP and HDPE. This would also increase the levels of good quality recyclate that becomes available following the process.

“These should absolutely be used more widely to ensure that the recycling chain becomes more streamlined and that the volume coming out of it is greater. Waste companies will want to invest in it if good quality feedstock is coming out,” he notes.

By Laxmi Haigh