EuPR calls for separate PET tray recycling

Plastics Recyclers Europe ( EuPR) has added its voice to those calling for PET trays to be recycled separately from bottles.

The trade body, which represents 90 members responsible for 2.5 million tonnes of plastic recycling, has issued a statement noting that 'PET bottles and trays must not be mixed to enable more efficient recycling'. If they are mixed, the statement continues, reprocessors can face problems with material quality. What's more, EuPR claims the mixing of trays with more valuable bottles 'could endanger the recycling of one of the most recycled plastics in Europe'.

The latest figures for Europe indicate that 51 per cent of PET bottles, 1.59 million tonnes, were recycled in 2011, but EuPR has expressed concern that this number is 'stagnating' because of 'persistent structural market failures across Europe'.

EuPR noted: 'The 700,000 tonnes of PET trays yearly consumed in Europe can be recycled as valuable material if they are properly separated from other streams such as PET bottles or polyolefins. This trend will enable investments in lines able to recycle trays and improve Europe's resource efficiency.'

'Two different products'

Casper van den Dungen, EuPR's PET Chairman, said: "Trays and bottles are two different types of products which cannot be recycled in the same recycling line. Their designs and chemical compositions are not the same and can create quality problems for existing PET recyclers.

"The collection schemes and sorting centres cannot push this issue down the value chain."

Plastic industry concern

EuPR's warning comes amid growing concern from the UK plastic industry on the impact that contamination and exportation have on their businesses.

At the Resource Recovery Forum's final conference last year, 'Mixed Plastics: What's Left to Sort?', industry representatives expressed concern with the growing number of councils that are collecting mixed plastics without the infrastructure in place to handle non-bottle plastics. Environment Agency Technical Adviser on International Waste Shipments Nigel Homer noted that exports of scrap plastics have gone from less than 100,000 tonnes per annum in 1999 to close to a million tonnes per annum today. Reprocessors also noted that mixed plastic (including non-bottle PET) is increasingly finding its way into plastic bottle bales.

Indeed, in the current issue of Resource magazine, ECO Plastics' Jonathon Short told us: "Millions of pounds of investment went into the collection and processing of plastic bottles, but not rigid plastics or black plastic, which we then started to receive. At a time when we're still sending 55 per cent of plastic bottles to landfill [in the UK], surely the first opportunity is to encourage more plastic bottles into the stream."

Short added that with 600,000 tonnes of plastic bottles used in the UK every year, and only 280,000 tonnes of those being collected, councils should be focusing on encouraging consumers to recycle their plastic bottles, adding: "What we're seeing coming through the plastic basket is probably 60 per cent bottle content - it was 80 per cent bottle content five years ago. If councils just encourage consumers to put plastic bottles in their recycling bin and get that extra 320,000 tonnes, councils would save on landfill tax and would get money from reprocessors too - I'd currently pay £160 a tonne for a pure plastic bottle stream - that is twice our current average price, which is reduced to take account of the non-plastic as well as the non-recyclable rigid plastic contamination."

Read more about EuPR.