PRE revises plastic bale purity guidelines

Brussels-based Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) says it has developed recycling input characterization guidelines, “based on the expertise of European plastics recyclers [and] aimed at encouraging the increasing quality of plastics recycling.”

The documents, available online, have been designed to provide “an information benchmark and a harmonized system of characterizing recyclers’ input, guiding the European market toward efficient, sustainable plastics waste management.”

Given the latest market developments, PRE says existing guidelines were updated and additional ones created, to cover the biggest recycling streams in Europe. The guidelines are now available for: polyethylene and polypropylene (PP) films, high-density polyethylene (HPDE) containers, rigid PP, polystyrene packaging, rigid and flexible polyvinyl chloride (PVC), electronic and automotive scrap plastic, and those for clear, clear-blue, light blue and colored polyethylene terephthalate (PET) scrao.

“To drive the quality of collected and sorted plastics, the characterization of the [scrap] that reaches the recycling plants must be coherent and drastically improved across the EU,” states PRE.

The guidelines attempt to specify the main properties that define the type, origins and characteristics of the scrap; levels of impurities; means of transportation and supplier information. “The documents can be [to] characterize the content of bales,” says PRE. “Furthermore, they can serve as an information benchmark in the process of checking the quality of the bales.”

The documents, previously known as bales characterization guidelines, were first released in 2017 and covered seven different streams.