PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2020

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 06/20 www.petpla.net 18 Is there a sustainable future for PET packaging? by Luc Desoutter, Sustainability Officer Sidel and Vincent Le Guen, Vice President Packaging Sidel Packaging in general has come under a lot of fire in the past few years, with different types of plastics under intense scrutiny. Therefore, many brand owners and suppliers are taking increas- ing care when it comes to packaging and especially the type of packaging materials they opt for. Simultaneously, governments and regulators are attempting to decrease the overall amount of waste created on a global scale, sometimes going for quick fixes that can result in unintended consequences. In this article, Luc Desoutter and Vincent Le Guen from Sidel explain the para- dox about PET bottles becoming the symbol of ocean waste and Single Use Plastics (SUP), while PET is the most recyclable and the most recycled plastic material. PET is a packaging material that has contributed to the development of the beverage industry by giving access to safe drinking water to bil- lions of people. It is a great resource with many advantages: safe, light- weight, transparent, re-sealable, shapeable, 100% recyclable, having a very low carbon footprint, good mechanical as well as barrier prop- erties at the price of a commodity. Plastics packaging like PET have a low environmental footprint compared to alternative non-plastic materials. The environmental costs of plastics in consumer goods are 3.8 times less than the alternatives. Bottle grade PET consumption is equal to less than 6% of total plastics production and far less than 1% of fossil resources, so banning this specific packaging mate- rial will not solve the environmental issues. In the packaging industry there is growing momentum to reduce waste by searching for alterna- tives to optimise primary, secondary and tertiary packaging, eliminating unnecessary plastics. In short, the problem that requires all our atten- tion is the leakage of waste to the environment and especially into the sea. But this pollution is neither exclusive to PET nor to SUP. The focus should be on waste manage- ment, including the rationalisation of waste streams by favouring easy to recycle and higher value materi- als as well as concentrating waste streams to a lower number with higher volumes. 100% closed loop recyclable food-grade plastic PET is the only plastic suitable for direct food contact and for closed loop bottle-to-bottle recycling. A PET bot- tle’s journey doesn’t end after single- use by consumers: used plastic bot- tles made of PET are recycled in such a way that the recyclate can be used for new PET bottles, thereby requir- ing fewer raw materials and reduc- ing waste. Thus, it is the only plastic packaging material that is 100% recy- clable, while meeting the tough stand- ards in food contact regulations. The closed loop bottle-to-bottle approach leads to the actual task of recycling PET, where two main coexisting processes are theoreti- Recycling Special Collection, sorting and recycling are regarded as the best solutions to minimise the environmental impact of PET bottles.