PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2020

TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 04/20 www.petpla.net 36 Trends and solutions in PET collection and recycling In the afternoon session of day two, the focus shifted to trends and solutions in the PET post-consumer collection and recycling. First, Wolfgang Ringel from Tomra gave an overview of the current state of Deposit Return Sys- tems and it’s potential to grow. He was followed by Vincent Colard from Citeo, who spoke about the collection and sorting of ODR and PET trays in France and Citeo’s efforts to find circular solu- tions. Afterwards Gian de Belder from Procter & Gamble and Larry Logan from Digimarc presented the Holy Grail project on digital watermarks. Gian announced that several P&G brands will integrate digital watermarks with first shipments at the end of the year in Germany. To end this session, Nicolas Grotus from Pellenc ST gave an insight- ful presentation on Artificial Intelligence and its place in solving food and non- food as well as other sorting challenges. The third session of the day focused on trends in PET trays recy- cling. Ana Fernandez, from Klöckner Pentaplast highlighted that “recycling PET thermoforms is the final step in closing the already successfull PET recycling loop”. Ana presented several projects that are working towards tray circularity. Afterwards, Mark Dawes from Dupont Teijin Films presented mono-material PET lidding flms and concluded that PET is a unique poly- mer that enables mono-material tray and lid solutions with high percent- ages of recycled content in direct food contact applications. Trends in chemical or back-to-monomer recycling The last session of this year’s Pet- core Europe Conference focused on monomer/enhanced recycling which was generally seen as one of the most important long-term solutions to make PET even more circular. Heike Fischer from PETplanet introduced and moderated the session in which Leela Dilkes-Hoffman from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Wim Hoen- derdaal from Indorama Ventures Europe and Bruno Van Gompel from Coca-Cola presented their views on PET monomer recycling. Leela described the recycling landscape: Prioritise where possible to preserving value. Mechanical recycling is a cost-effective form of recycling, but it can’t remove some additives and contaminants. There is a loss of material properties over time. The sol- vent based purification complements mechanical by removing additives. Material still has a decrease in aver- age molecular weight over time. She stated: “There is a physical limit to how many times a polymer can go through that is why an “inner loop” is needed to complementary the outer loop.” She continued explaining the opportunities of depolymerisation:  This method helps to have more plastics circulate within the circular economy by complementing exist- ing infrastructure  Acting as a ‘reset’ lever and allow- ing exchange of materials between different applications and value chains (e.g. textiles to packaging). Leela concludes: “We can’t chemi- cally recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis!” Depolymerisation needs to be developed as an inte- grated, not an independent solution. There is still a need of a systems per- spective. It does not eliminate the role of design and is not a replacement but a complement to mechanical recycling as well as reuse and new delivery models. Wim Hoenderdaal, Chairman of the PET Monomer Recycling Special Industry Group prepared ten most FAQs about PET monomer recycling. He started with the question: Which problems does PET monomer recy- cling solve? “With PET monomer recy- cling it is possible to recycle the hard to recyclable plastic which can now be transformed to the building blocks needed to create new, food-grade high quality polymer. Poor quality plastic packaging and other polyesters articles that are not currently recycled can be transformed and returned ‘as good as new’, not just once but again and again. PET monomer recycling in com- bination with mechanical recycling can make recycle contents of 70 to 80% feasible on a sustainable basis. It will also solve the waste problem: After all efforts from consumers and cost by the industry to collect and sort the plastic, we can give a guarantee that PET is recycled and not disappears after- wards in incineration or landfill.” Another question Wim answered was: Is it competing with mechani- cal recycling or is it complementary? For Wim it should be no question that monomer recycling is always com- plementary. He went on that good quality feedstock can and should be recycled mechanically. “While Europe uses approx. 4.5mio tonnes of PET for packaging, 50% might be good enough for mechanical recycling. Monomer recycling can recover the rest: coloured, opaque, multilayer, blends, thermoforms and other PET products (textiles).” Bruno van Gompel explained the strategic direction of Coca-Cola towards a world without waste: Coca-Cola will remove unnecessary and hard-to- recycle single use packaging, will use 100% recycled and reusable content which is defined as a combination of mechanical, enhanced and plant-based PET to ensure a bottle made of no virgin fossil fuel based material. Coca- Cola is working to collect 100% of its packaging and is exploring refillable and packaging free delivery models. As an example Bruno introduced a 100% rPET bottle from Coca-Cola Sweden. Wim, Chairman of the PET Monomer Recycling Special Industry Group had the pleasure to announce that the first PET Monomer Recycling Forum 2020 will take place in Brussels very soon. www.petcore-europe.org Sebastian Lemp (Petcore Europe) F.l.t.r.: Wim Hoenderdaal (Indorama), Leela Dilkes-Hoffman (Ellen MacArthur Foundation) and Bruno Van Gompel (Coca-Cola).