Spain’s Technological Institute of Plastic (Aimplas, Valencia; www.aimplas.es), is coordinating the work of seven European companies and technology centres in five countries on developing new biodegradable packaging for dairy products. The “Biobottle” project aims to create multilayer and monolayer plastic bottles that can be discarded with other organic waste and do not have to be recycled at considerable expense.

As Aimplas – a non-profit research agency – notes, milk bottles are used only once, thus generating a large volume of waste. To be recycled, the packaging has to undergo an exhaustive high temperature washing process that the dairy and packaging industries would prefer to avoid.

One of the main barriers to developing the organic packaging is finding, Aimplas said, is finding a biodegradable material that meets the strict requirements of the dairy industry as well as conventional packaging. This includes resistance to high-temperature treatments such as sterilisation or pasteurisation. To this end, the researchers expect to have to modify the biodegradable materials currently in commercial use through reactive extrusion to overcome thermal limitations.

The Biobottle project is receiving EUR 1m in financial support under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme. European countries are the world’s largest consumers of dairy products, the bulk of which is packaged in HDPE bottles. Although the material is completely recyclable, post-consumption management normally should not be a problem, Aimplas comments, adding that, “in fact, however, only 10-15% of the 2m t of HDPE used for packaging is actually recycled” – (see also Plasteurope.com of 21.05.2014).