News & Events

The Plastics Recycling Show Europe (PRSE) on 24th-25th April 2018 in Amsterdam is approaching with big steps. We at Petcore Europe, official supporter of the event, would like to keep you up-to-date.

The show's draft conference programme has been released. It promises plenty of interesting presentations. Amongst others, industry experts as well as representatives of the European Commission and Parliament will talk about current issues of plastics recycling. The second session of the first day will focus on the latest developments within the PET recycling sector.

Petcore Europe welcomes eleven new members in Q1 2018: BASF, Logoplaste, DuPont Teijin Films, MacDermid, CCL Label, Coca-Cola, Danone, Fuji Seal Europe, LSDH, Graham Packaging Europe and Henkel.

"We are happy to welcome eleven new members to Petcore Europe. The companies are important players in different fields along the PET value chain. With every new member our association and the entire PET industry gets a little bit stronger," outlines Christian Crépet, Executive Director of Petcore Europe.

Petcore Europe has created the new Plastic Aerosol Recycling Special Industry Group (SiG) in order to anticipate the need to recycle higher amounts of plastic aerosols. This industry task force is therefore looking for ways to increase the recycling volumes of PET products from the household packaging waste stream.

Background

In 2020, the Aerosol Dispenser Directive (ADD) will potentially allow plastic aerosols beyond 220 ml in Europe.

Out of 3.147.000 tonnes of PET bottles and containers placed in the European market in 2016, a remarkable number of 59.8% - in total 1.880.900 tonnes - were collected and thereof 1.773.200 tonnes mechanically recycled. These conclusions come from the annual PCI Wood Mackenzie PET recycle survey for West Europe in 2016, commissioned by Petcore Europe. It shows that the collection rates increased by 7.4%, while the recycling rates also grew by 7.3%. In 2016, that resulted in 129.400 tonnes more collected and 120.000 tonnes more recycled PET compared to 2014.

Six European organisations from the plastics value chain have committed themselves, in cooperation with the European Commission, to launch several Circularity Platforms. They will advance the recycling of plastic products in Europe and consequently reduce littering volumes considerably.

The European Plastics Converters (EuPC), Petcore Europe, the Polyolefin Circular Economy Platform (PCEP), Plastics Europe and the Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) support this joint position on the Circular Economy Package:

DEMETO: modular, scalable and high-performance DE-polymerization by MicrowavE TechnolOgy

The new European project on chemical recycling DEMETO is officially launched. DEMETO aims at enabling chemical de-polymerization of PET at industrial scale based on its microwave-based process intensification, focusing as a start on coloured bottles waste.

Paola Arlotti, Senior Marketing Manager at Equipolymers and representing CPME, was elected new Petcore Europe President during the last Board Meeting in October. As interim, she took over from Roberto Bertaggia from M&G. Since 2004, Paola is working at Equipolymers in the PET commerical area.

More than 9 years have passed since the publication of the Regulation (EC) No. 282/2008 setting up the rules on the use of recycled plastic materials in food applications. To this date, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has adopted more than 140 positive scientific opinions on the safety of processes to recycle plastics for use in food contact materials. Following these opinions, the European Commission is in a position to officially authorize the evaluated processes. However, it has not taken any initiative in that direction so far.