PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2019

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 04/19 www.petpla.net 26 Glass-coated PET bottles resolve juice production challenge Fully recyclable When the German Packaging Law came into effect on January 1, 2019, the new legislation set down binding rules to increase recycling quotas. The amendment will levy higher fees for packaging which is difficult to recycle. This includes non-returnable PET bottles with compos- ite materials for juice and nectar, among other products. Juice and nectar producers are thus currently looking for solutions which will help them to avoid the ensuing increase in costs. The FreshSafe PET technol- ogy from KHS is claimed to present a viable alternative as it combines product protection with bottle-to-bottle recyclability. In view of the European Strategy for Plastics and other national legislation in countries outside Ger- many, KHS’ barrier technology is gaining in significance at an interna- tional level. When the new Packaging Law superseded the former Packag- ing Ordinance at the beginning of this year as the legal framework for the German market, it defined a new target quota of 70% for returnable systems. The new regulations also prescribe increased recycling quotas for all types of packaging – also for plastics. As of January, 58.5% of all plastic waste is to be recycled, i.e. the separate materi- als recovered and reused. From 2022 onwards this figure is to rise to 63%. At the moment the amount of plastic recy- cled in Germany totals around 36%. In this context the dual waste dis- posal systems responsible for the col- lection of recyclable materials, such as non-returnable juice and nectar PET bottles, will be obliged to signifi- cantly increase their recycling quotas in the future. The new law allows them to reduce costs for easily and effectively recyclable materials and to charge more for packaging which is difficult to reuse. In the future the participation fees calculated on this basis will be determined by a number of ecological criteria. The better a type of packaging can be segregated and recycled, the lower the fees for bever- age producers and retailers. Additives in PET bottles complicate recycling In particular, this rule has an effect on all those beverages whose packaging materials cannot be easily recycled as they contain additives. Juice and nectar producers especially, who fill their products into PET bottles, are affected in some areas. Non- returnable PET bottles are essentially fully recyclable; however, most of today’s juice and nectar bottles do not consist solely of PET. In many cases they contain multilayer, blended or scavenger materials which protect the sensitive beverages from external influences such as oxygen pickup. The composition of these PET bot- tles is such that it does not allow the materials to be collected by type and recycled together with PET bottles which fall under the one-way deposit system, thus hindering the establish- ment of a global recycling process. “One quarter of the clear rPET flakes from yellow recycling sacks contain scavengers which impair the quality with their yellowish colour, for exam- ple,” states Herbert Snell, managing director of the MultiPet GmbH recy- cling company. “Mixing PET bottles like these with other beverage bottles made of PET makes it more much more difficult to use these rPET flakes for bottle-to-bottle recycling.” “This is why at the moment they cannot be included in the German deposit system for one-way pack- aging,” says Snell. According to a current study by packaging market research institute GVM, about 10% of all non-returnable PET bottles do not carry a deposit, meaning that in 2017 38,000 metric tons of PET material bypassed the deposit system. At pre- sent the majority of such containers is used to bottle juices and nectars. If producers in this beverage seg- ment fail to optimise their packaging portfolio with a view to full recyclabil- ity, they also face the threat of higher additional fees for placing classic PET bottles with additives on the market. FreshSafe PET juice bottles 100% recyclable Beverage producers can find one alternative in the FreshSafe PET Recycling Special