Polymark to spend nearly $3 million in developing new technology to boost PET recycling

WEMBLEY (Scrap Monster): The EU is making a big push to Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) recycling by funding a research project that intends to develop a new technology to increase recycled content in PET bottles. The ‘Polymark’ project is supported by various plastic groups across the EU. As per reports, nearly $3 million will be spent to increase the availability of recycled PET for the production of new beverage containers.

According to estimates, PET is the largest plastic material recycled in Europe. More than 60 billion PET bottles were collected and recycled in 2012. Almost 30% of the total amount of recycled PET is already being used to produce new PET bottles. Currently, the availability of recycled PET suitable for reuse into beverage packaging is limited. The ’Polymark’ project will develop a technology for the automated detection and sorting of suitable PET bottles.

Polymark is an EU-funded collaborative project under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) scheme. The Consortium consists of Petcore Europe, the European Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW), Plastic Recyclers in Europe (PRE), the European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery (EPRO), 4PET Recycling BV, and Closed Loop Recycling Ltd. The Research and Technology Developers are ColorMatrix, Fraunhofer Institut IPMS, Pera Technology Ltd (UK Health & Environment Research Institute) and S+S (Sesotec).

The project’s budget is € 2.2 million, of which the EU has contributed € 1.478 million. The ‘Polymark’ project will run for 36 months.