PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 03/23 www.petpla.net 43 TRADE SHOW REVIEW PET value chain in a fast-paced environment for circularity Petcore Europe Annual Conference 2023 part 1 by Heike Fischer First day Antonello Ciotti, President of Petcore Europe, welcomed the participants and reaffirmed the solidarity of the 143 members representing the entire value chain. He emphasised the importance of the Petcore Europe association’s voice as the most important within the EU. He called for an improvement of internal and external communication, especially with regard to the ten Directives under debate this year. Dr Bruno Langlois, Carbios and Chair of the Depolymerisation Working Group, reported that there are currently four projects within and outside the EU. The companies involved are Eastman, Axens, Loop and Carbios. All these projects are still at different stages of development. Commercial scale is supported by the PPWR (November 2022), which provides for the reuse of materials and an increase in recycling. The textile feedstock is particularly important, Bruno added. An important issue, according to Bruno, is and remains the debate on mass balance. Mass balance is a widely used supply chain monitoring method in the depolymerisation industry. A “flat reallocation” is usually used over production batches. And guarantees confidence because of the ease of traceability. The debate revolves around reallocation and book and claim. Delphine Close, Policy Manager at Unesda Soft Drinks Europe and Chair of Petcore Europe’s Reuse Working Group explained that PET can play a key role in the circular economy for packaging by offering both recycling and reusable solutions that are safe and convenient for consumers while reducing packaging waste. She affirmed that recycling & reusing are two complementary ways to achieve packaging circularity, but the right conditions and enablers need to be set to ensure a positive integration of both solutions. Therefore, it was important to set up this new working group. The group works to provide information to stakeholders and decision-makers who want to better understand the recyclability of PET and share best practices among industry players, Delphine summarised. There were two updates on LCA: Lauren Laibach, Director of Data Services National Association for PET Container Resources (Napcor) and Stefan Frehland, Sustainability Consultant at Quantis. Lauren briefly explained that the new Napcor report will be authored by Franklin Associates (ERG). The study compares PET, glass and aluminium keg container systems and looks at multiple scenarios for each packaging format. The new report shows current life cycle assessments for virgin and recycled PET resin supply chains. However, Lauren has already been able to confirm that a PET CSD bottle weighs 9% less than a PET CSD bottle in 2009 compared to 2022, uses 25% less energy in production and ultimately produces 19% less greenhouse gas emissions. She concluded that PET bottle systems consistently have lower impacts than aluminium and glass alternatives in terms of cumulative energy demand, waste generation, global warming potential, acidification potential and smog formation potential. Stefan presented the Quantis method of a holistic multi-indicator approach to sustainability decision making. He explained Sphere, the so-called Packaging Sustainability The 30th anniversary of the annual Petcore conference was celebrated in Brussels on February 1+2, 2023. About 300 participants attended the hybrid conference on the topic “PET value chain in a fast-paced environment for circularity”. In addition to a festive evening event, Petcore set new accents within the conference programme structure. On the first day, short keynote speeches on technical updates were given by the different working groups chairs. This was followed by high-level panel discussions. The result was a series of exciting presentations on topics that are among the most pressing. On the second day, extensive presentations were held on the topic of the “PET value chain in a fast-changing environment”, including the annual update of the EU regulations for the plastics industry.
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