PETpla.net Insider 07+08 / 2021

TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 07+08/21 www.petpla.net 44 “Post Covid-19 - Strategy and Trends for the Circular PET Economy” Petcore Europe annual conference 2021 part 2 The last three sessions of the second day of the conference covered the topics of “Trends in Design for Recy- cling”, “Monomer Recycling - where is circular PET headed?” and “Circularity of PET - opportunities beyond recy- cling”. The session of “Trends in Design for Recycling” started with a presenta- tion by Luca Stramare from Corepla, who introduced the idea of a PET tray recyclability evaluation platform and continued with an update of the Euro- pean PET Bottles Platform (EPBP). Luca mentioned the importance of focussing on design for recycling. He pointed out that the PET thermoforms platform is ready to take the chal- lenge by “smartly cloning” of the EPBP concept for closing the loop on PET tray recycling. He explained that the full value chain is already represented under the umbrella of Petcore Europe. For building up the PET thermo- forms platform the EPBP recyclability assessment model was adapted to the thermoforms value chain and its peculi- arities. A steering and technical com- mittee has already been appointed. Luca said that until today a toolbox with a main test protocol is de fi ned and a fi rst reference lab is identi fi ed. Only the quick tests still needed to be worked out. Design guidelines for the recycling of clear PET trays were published. Paolo Glerean from Aliplast intro- duced RecyClass with its new Recy- cled Content Traceability Certi fi cation. It contains the traceability evaluation of recycled material fl ows in a site pro- ducing products with rContent. Paolo explained that an independent certi fi - cation body veri fi es the traceability of recycled content and the calculation of pre-consumer and post-consumer share in products. He added that the certi fi cate validity is one year. The Audit Scheme of the cert fi cation was devel- oped according to a controlled blending model as described in ISO22095 Chain of Custody. The Audit Scheme was published in July 2020, the documen- tation can be found on the RecyClass homepage. The following session was about the topic of “Monomer Recycling - where is circular PET headed?” Mike Neal from Petkonsept emphasised the lack of a Monomer Recycling Legis- lation. He fi nally summarised that in the future the EU Commission is going to produce legislation to include chemi- cal recycling. He pointed out that at the moment, the legislation is not even in draft stage. Martin Stephan, CEO of Carbios and Co-Chair of the Monomer Recy- cling SIG told about what the Mono- mer Recycling WG has initiated. The results are a Monomer NIAS evalua- tion program, a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) evaluation of the industry and a general speci fi cation for mono- mers/oligomers. In September 2021 the working group will present DG Santé fi rst results of NIAS testing program, TRL, sector time to market. In a second step they will fi nalise the speci fi cation/ TRL/NIAS testing program and fi nally exchange with other Petcore Europe WG to structure feed stocks supply chain for monomer recycling. Jean-François Briois from Nestlé Waters explained Nestlé’s vision for packaging sustainability. Nestlé’s long term vision is that none of their packag- ing ends up in land fi ll or as litter. By 2025, Nestlé intends to reduce its virgin plastic by 33%, and to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable. Jean-Francoise highlited that PET packaging has the potential to become truly circular in 2030. After a com- parison of mechanical and monomer recycling he summarised that monomer recycling needs support at R&D stage to qualify as many feedstocks as possi- ble and to de fi ne relevant quality speci- fi cations. He added that there must be a support during scale-up to guide and fund industrial scale-up. The last session of the event was about “Circularity of PET - opportunities beyond recycling”. Carl-Eric Portaels from Petcore Europe presented Pet- core’s communication campaign. The mission of the campaing is to achieve holistic recognition of the performance of PET to be a material of choice for packaging and other end-uses, meet- ing environmental, sustainability and performance criteria expectations of the consumer and other stakeholders. With websites, webinars and tests in France and Germany, the campaign End Waste, Recycle the One aims to present consumers critical knowledge on PET as a valuable resource and understanding on how to correctly recycle it. Eric Schaffner, CEO and Founder of Zeloop showed a mobile applica- tion to reduce plastic littering. The application is characterised by giving incentives to the consumer for their pro- environmental behaviours with a fi rst focus on plastic bottle collection. The whole Circular Economy Reward- ing Platform has the aim to educate consumers in a smart way for sorting, resulting in more collection and better sorting quality. Sebastian Lemp from Alpla Group introduced a reuse model by Alpla. With a special designed PET bottle the consumer can re fi ll the bottle at home or on the go. At a return drop of point the PET bottle is collected. Alpla’s PET pool bottles are a 1 l bottle with 55g and 500ml bottle with 38g (up to 10g less than comparable PET solutions). These bottles withstand a minimum of 15 cycles. by Heike Fischer www.petcoreeuropeannualconference.eu/presentations