PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2013

NEWS 11 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 03/13 www.petpla.net Market failures threaten PET recycling The PET recycling industry is threatened by persistent structural market failures across Europe, according to EuPR (Plastics recyclers Europe), whose members constitute 80% of the European recycling capacity and process more than 3 million tonnes of collected plastics waste per year. The organisation says that current collection infrastructures have reached their limit and that the collection of PET bottles is stagnating around 50%, with the balance of the uncol- lected PET is sent to landfill or incinerated. Casper van den Dungen, Chairman of the EuPR PET Working Group, said “Europe is not maximising the sustainable use of a valuable resource such as post-consumer PET”. EuPR also claims that recent trends towards intensive lightweighting and com- plex bottle design have led to increases in the average costs of recycling, and that these higher costs cannot currently be corrected by further economies of scale. Demand for recycled PET has risen in recent years, which has led to sig- nificant investments in new recycling lines. “The combined effect of these market failures are causing recycling plants to operate at well below 75% of their capacity,” van den Dungen said. The organisation further claims that the possi- ble lifting of current anti-dumping duties on virgin PET could further worsen the EU industry’s position. EuPR says that its efforts to reform the current EU PET recycling infrastructure and improve the current imbalances will require support from other stakeholders and especially the EU institutions in order to meet the objectives of present and future EU Waste and Recycling Directives are to be achieved. www.eupr.org Sidel scores at Pentawards Sidel’s DailyDose system was presented with the Silver Award at the Pentawards 2012, an international com- petition dedicated to packag- ing design. The competition awarded prizes for two areas: graphic design and concept. DailyDose was put forward for its concept in the Beverages category. The international jury composed of design and marketing experts headed by Gérard Caron, considered 1,200 entries from 46 coun- tries, led by France, Japan, the USA and the UK. This is the third time Sidel has won a Pentaward for one of its crea- tive PET designs. DailyDose, which is aimed at the ‘health- ier living’ market, is presented as a pack of six assorted bot- tles, reminiscent of fruit slices and containing the equivalent of a quarter-serving of fruit. PETplanet Insider published a full report of this product in 10/2011 p25. www.sidel.com