Abstract
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the main packaging materials for beverage bottles. Even if this polymer is good to recycle, mechanical recycling processes need a well-sorted input fraction. For less-sorted PET packaging, or even non-food input sources, chemical recycling seems to be a solution to increase PET recycling. For post-consumer recyclates in packaging applications, it is essential that the safety of the recyclates is guaranteed, and the consumers’ health protected. For mechanical recycling processes, evaluation criteria are already established. For chemical recycling processes, however, such evaluation criteria are only roughly available. This study evaluated the safety of the chemical recycling process similar to the approach of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). However, due to the lack of information about the contamination level of the input materials for the chemical recycling process, the evaluation was adapted. In addition, the evaluation should be performed separately for the depolymerisation and for the repolymerisation steps. However, due to the high cleaning efficiencies of both steps, the evaluation can focus on the repolymerisation. This simplifies the assessment of the chemical recycling processes considerably.
Highlights
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the main packaging materials, especially for beverages bottles
The containers were analytically screened for substances from the first use and those that are absorbed into the PET
Assuming that the repolymerisation process has a cleaning efficiency of 99.9%, the maximum concentration of toluene increases by an additional factor of 1000 to 79,700 mg/kg, which is a concentration of 7.97% of toluene in the input material of a chemical recycling process
Summary
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the main packaging materials, especially for beverages bottles. PET is the main packaging material for mechanical recycling, and several recycling processes have been established for several years [4]. Mechanical recycling of PET beverage bottles requires a well-sorted and clean input fraction in order to prevent the recyclate containing bottles from hazardous contamination [5,6,7]. Such well-sorted input fractions are not available in every country. Due to the heterogeneity of these applications and the lack of suitable recollection systems, these PET applications are excluded from mechanical recycling at the moment [11]
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