PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2010

BOTTLING / FILLING 30 PET planet insider Vol. 11 No. 11/10 www.petpla.net Bottle production from 100% recycled material ‘Green Plan’ for eco-friendly water bottling leadership Ice River Springs of Ontario, Canada, is in the final stages of installing their own PET recycling plant, which will pro- duce its own 100% recycled PET for water bottles. The aim is to reduce its carbon footprint by closing the loop for plas- tics and re-processing post consumer PET that is currently either shipped overseas or applied in North America for single-use products. Shortage of rPET in the market In 2008, Ice River Springs launched its ‘Green Plan’: which incorporates a number of initiatives intended to make the company the most environmental friendly water bottler in the world. The strategy focuses on efficiency, renewable energy (primarily geothermal and solar) and packaging reduction. At the same time, the company also began to experiment with recycled resins. It purchased recycled resins from PET recycling specialist Phoenix Technolo- gies and found that it was possible to make a 100% recycled PET bottle, but only if the resin was in pellet form. Flakes from rPET could not be processed with the demanded level of reliability – for example, it was unable to maintain constant pressure during preform production. In 2009, the company began sell- ing water in bottles that contained rPET (either 100% or 50%) to some of their major Canadian customers. However, they quickly realized that there was a general shortage of avail- able rPET in the market. Many Ontario recyclers are used to selling their baled PET bottles to Asia. The only way Ice River Springs could convert all of its products over to rPET plastic was if it could supply the material to itself; the company therefore decided to go for its own in-house PET recy- cling system. If successful, Ontario recyclers would no longer need to sell baled PET bottles to Asia, further reducing transportation emissions. Furthermore, purchases of PET baled plastic on this scale in Ontario would provide a stable demand for baled post consumer plastic, stabilising prices and making recycling centres more economically feasible. The equipment: washing line and pelletizing/SSP line The company proceeded to install two production lines. The first was the washing line, which was installed in a new facility located about 25km from the main factory. The facility is located on the existing trucking route for Ice River trucks in order to back- haul the baled material and mini- mize freight cost and emissions. It is designed to purchase PET bottles in baled form from recycling centres & bottle depots, sort them for colour, type of plastic and metal/paper content, wash them, grind them into flakes and then sort the flakes for colour and type of plastic. The final product is clean PET flake material. The equipment for the washing line was supplied by several different vendors, including Italy’s Amu and Ariostea; Titech of Norway; Sortex, from the UK; and others. The second line is the pelletising & SSP (Solid State Polycondensa- tion) line, which is located in one of Ice River Springs’ existing bottling plants. It is designed to take clean PET flake material from the washing line, melt it down, send it through a melt filter and then pelletize it. The pellets are then sent into an SSP unit that removes contaminants. The