Thinner bottles make for worse PET recyclate, says Plastic Recyclers Europe

Plastics Recyclers Europe has reported that the average yield of PET recyclers has decreased from 73 per cent to 68 per cent since 2011.

The quality of PET recyclate is diminishing, says Plastic Recylers Europe, blaming lighter bottle material and a diversifying input stream.

The average yield of PET recyclers has decreased from 73 per cent to 68 per cent since 2011. This five points decrease has led to substantial and additional cost for the European PET recyclers. They are also made to discard more material in order to achieve good quality of recycled PET.

Thinner bottles are making for a higher moisture content in bales, and thinner flakes are more likely to be discarded during the recycling process. This trend is reaching its limits of circularity even though minimisation of resources use is one of the prerogatives of Circular Economy.

The market for PET products has also grown beyond bottles and this waste stream is becoming more complex. The market for non-bottle is estimated to cover 18 per cent and it is forecasted to grow over the next years.

It also claims that collection systems are failing to adapt to diveisification changes, and products such as opaque PET bottles and PET trays are entering the coloured PET bales. These two products represent a fifth of the content of the coloured PET bales in France.

Casper van den Dungen, Chairman of the PRE PET Working Group, said: “Even though PET is the most widely recycled plastic, the various stakeholders should work on eco-design of PET products to improve its recyclability. Most importantly, the EPR schemes must urgently upgrade their sorting requirements to safeguard the proven quality of recycled PET from bottle stream and strongly support the developing of new dedicated streams for opaque PET bottles and PET trays.”