PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2019

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insid er Vol. 20 No. 04/19 www.petpla.net 20 Recycling Special PET BOTTLE WASHING LINE SUPER CLEAN PROCESS (SCP) Capacity : 3000 kg/h / 6000 kg/h Born for Food Grade Bottle-to-Bottle Modular Design for Flexible Layout considerable shortfall in demand, for PET at least. PETplanet: Which means that the post-consumer PET bottles which are not being recycled in open or closed loop systems will be transferred to thermal recycling. Löhl: However, the question must be asked as to what is actually so bad about thermal recycling? Around 87% of crude oil is directly converted into thermal energy (vehicles, aircraft, heating, power plants etc.) in Europe. Approximately eight percent is used for other purposes (building work, road construction etc.). Only around five percent is used in the production of all plastics, of which 40% is used for packaging. That means that only two percent of crude oil goes into the pro- duction of all types of packaging (foil, bottles etc.). No-one has yet been able to con- vince me why it is not sustainable to first manufacture products such as plastic packaging from crude oil, then protect their contents with packaging, bring the content with the packaging safely to the consumer before ther- mally recycling it . Here in Germany, residual waste is used in waste incineration plants. Gas and crude oil are frequently used as additional flammable agents to ensure the mate- rial actually burns. It would be much more sustainable to use a product such as old plastic for incineration purposes and generate energy before direct burn- ing oil at these facilities. The talk of the so- called “plastic flood” or “mountains of plastic” is hard to bear. These do not exist at all! With the drink deposit for beverage bottles and the installed deposit machines (approximately 99% of which are returned to be processed again into recyclate) and yellow bag systems for packaging waste, Germany has the most efficient and best col- lection/utilisation regime anywhere in the world. It may well be time to reduce the discus- sion about the use and recycling of plastic pack- aging from the current emotional and populist level to a more factual and evidence-based approach. However, given the diverse interests of politics, so-called environ- mental organisations, the media, consumers and industry, this is likely to be difficult PETplanet: Thank you very much!