What is PET?

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a versatile thermoplastic that is often used in the packaging and textile industries due to its excellent properties.

In the packaging sector, PET is often used to make bottles and trays because it is strong, lightweight, clear, and resistant to moisture and chemicals. These properties make PET ideal for the storage of beverages, food and pharmaceutical products, ensuring product safety and an extended shelf life.

The challenge: PET beverage bottles from separate collection or deposit systems are ideal for recycling as they have high purity and low contamination. However, all other PET packaging from household waste, such as PET trays and coloured and opaque PET packaging, pose several challenges for the sorting and recycling infrastructure.

Multi-layer PET trays often contain different types of plastics and materials (such as adhesives, barrier layers and other polymers) that are difficult to separate. These multi-material structures may not melt evenly during recycling, causing processing problems and reducing the quality and usability of the recycled PET (rPET). Dyed PET can introduce undesirable colour tones into recycled PET, limiting its usability for certain applications where clarity and colour consistency are critical.