The Polymark Consortium, a group representing polymer recyclers, has developed a prototype chemical marker that can be added to PET that comes into contact with food and is detectable during high-speed sorting of mixed waste streams, according to an interim project report.
Such a marker would enable food-contact PET to be identified and separated from mixed waste streams, increasing the availability of ‘closed-loop’ recycled PET.
The report, ‘Removable Identification Technology to Differentiate Food Contact PET in Mixed Waste Streams’, outlines the development of food-contact approved chemical coating as part of a three-year research project funded by the European Commission.
According to the report, the project’s aim ‘is to develop a marker-based system, suitable for large-scale industrial implementation, to reliably detect and sort food-contact PET from a PET bale containing a mixture of food-contact and non-food-contact packaging’.
Project findings
According to the report, the equivalent of 66 billion 1.5 litre PET bottles were collected and recycled in 2014, representing 57 per cent of bottles and containers placed in the European market, though wide variation on plastics landfill waste exists: figures show Germany sends less than 10 per cent of plastic waste to landfill, while the UK has a rate of more than 66 per cent.
Challenges the report highlights to the recycling of PET include the requirements set out by the European Commission that seek to protect consumers from contamination of food-safe plastics during the recycling process. These, it suggests, are particular challenging in countries where recycling collections take mixed waste.
The consortium now claims to have developed a coating-based, food-contact-approved fluorescent marker that can be added to PET bottles. The next step, the report says, is to test it in real-world environments and test prototype detection and sorting equipment that is currently under development.
Development enables long-term planning in industry
Patrick Peuch from Petcore Europe said: “After 18 months of work and a good project review with the European Commission in June, we are now pleased to present the first technical results of the Polymark project.
“Our research partners have successfully developed a complete technology package. By publically releasing these results, in agreement with our Polymark Consortium and the approval of the European Commission, we aim to raise early awareness and to give unconstrained access to the widest number of interested parties for their faster consideration and longer-term planning.”
Read the full Polymark report.
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