Monomer Recycling Group launched to enhance the circularity of PET

Petcore Europe has launched the PET Monomer Recycling Special Industry Group, to open a new perspective on how to deal with concerns about plastics and plastic waste.

Monomer recycling helps brings PET bottles and food containers back to their constituents, monomers, or low molecular weight components that allow purifications, meaning endless reuse of these PET building blocks.

This is different to mechanical recycling where colours, additives, and other polymers in multi-layer constructions reduce recyclability.

Monomer recycling avoids down-cycling and allows up-cycling, solving the waste problem by giving all PET waste value.

Wim Hoenderdaal, Chairman of the new Petcore Europe Special Industry Group, said: “PET Monomer Recycling has the potential to double recycled content rates. With only mechanically recycled PET, rates of 30 per cent are the limit, at higher levels of rPET content, the quality of bottles and trays decreases.”

Christian Crépet, Executive Director of Petcore Europe, said: “The missions of this new group is to facilitate a platform to position PET monomer recycling as a viable addition to the established mechanical recycling process, enhancing the circularity of PET.”