Petcore Europe hosts workshops on rigid PET recycling

Petcore Europe, a Brussels-based organization that focuses on PET (polyethylene terephthalate) recycling efforts, recently held a workshop in Brussels that addressed the recycling of rigid PET plastic thermoforms in Europe. The workshop brought together 50 executives from a range of companies throughout the PET supply chain, including PET producers, converters, users, recyclers, technology providers and collection agencies.

“The recycling of PET is a success story,” said Wim Hoenderdaal from Indorama, one of the organizers of the workshop. “It is the only [plastics] example on a large scale where the circle is closed at the highest level and where new high-quality packaging can be made out of recycled resin.”

Recycled PET is used to make new bottles and thermoforms, including for PET thermoforms (mainly food trays) that are produced with recycled PET content that often exceeds 70 percent.

The one-day workshop was structured in three parts: collection and sorting, which included the current state in different countries like Germany, Belgium, UK and France; packaging technologies; and recycling technologies.

Each session was followed by a panel debate where participants discussed and shared knowledge.
“PET is the only [plastics] value chain that takes care of the complete life cycle of its products, including thermoforms,” said Patrick Peuch, executive director of Petcore Europe. “Therefore, the goal of this workshop was to build and promote a working group to specifically update the state of the art in the PET thermoforms life cycle, including design for recycling, packaging technologies, collection, sorting and recycling technologies.”