PET Recycling: High Quality And Sustainability Combined

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): Each minute, more 1 million plastic bottles are purchased around the world. Plastics have undoubtedly transformed modern life, delivering convenience, durability, and cost-efficiency, but their environmental impact has become an urgent global concern. Simply put, they do not degrade quickly and have accumulated in many places. Just think of the countless plastic bottles lining roadsides.

Due to its toughness, clarity, and stability, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is an ideal material for food and beverage packaging, effectively protecting, preserving, and showcasing contents. This toughness means PET can fulfill its role while being remarkably thin (typically 0.010 to 0.020 inches). These qualities reduce transportation costs and lower the carbon footprint by allowing more of a beverage shipment to be the beverage itself, and less of the container. The massive number of beverages consumed worldwide results in a corresponding volume of discarded bottles. Around 500 billion PET bottles are used globally each year, with 35 billion empty bottles discarded annually in the U.S. alone. This is where PET’s durability becomes a challenge. Fortunately, PET is highly recyclable, and when properly cleaned, it can be re-extruded into new bottles that closely match the quality of the original ‘virgin’ material. However, there are three fundamental obstacles to large-scale PET recycling: logistics, economics, and technical constraints. Let’s take a closer look at each challenge and the solutions being applied.

#1: Operational Challenges

The initial logistical challenge lies in accumulating a sufficient quantity of bottles for cost-effective processing. It is far easier to manufacture a million PET bottles and distribute them to consumers than it is to retrieve those million bottles post-use, making collection a major hurdle.

One of the best solutions to this problem is an economic one, specifically motivating the end user. Consider the bottled drink: most consumers are not interested in the bottle itself. It is merely a container for the product. Once empty, the bottle has no value to them, and most see it as trash and to be disposed of quickly, sometimes leading to litter.

To counter this, an effective approach is to create tangible consumer value out of that empty bottle, and cash has proven to work well. This is the idea behind deposit schemes: add a small deposit to the purchase price and refund that amount when the bottle is returned. The amount is small, so it will not affect purchasing decisions, but it will make consumers feel compensated when they return the bottle.

The success of these systems is dependent on the size of the deposit and the ease of receiving a refund. In Germany, where beverage containers carry a significant deposit (often €0.25 per bottle), bottles are rarely discarded. In addition, nearly all grocery stores are equipped with reverse vending machines, making bottle return quick and convenient. Deposit schemes require infrastructure, but they are undeniably effective in reducing litter and increasing recycling rates.

#2: Economic Challenges

Collecting and transporting bottles is an expensive task, creating an economic obstacle for large-scale PET recycling. Even with a robust return system in place, recyclers are responsible for the transport and processing costs of feedstocks that are often dirty and mixed with other plastics. Along with the cost of transport, approximately 70 percent of a typical plastic recycling process yields usable material, creating additional economic barriers for recyclers. Few will take this on at an industrial scale without adequate incentives.

Technical Challenges

Recyclers remain focused on reducing the intrinsic cost of rPET by increasing purity and yield, even amid improving economic conditions. Unlike the highly consistent quality of vPET, rPET faces challenges related to feedstock variability and contamination. To address this, recyclers are optimizing various processing steps to enhance the quality of rPET.

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantagemag.com