A number of leading European associations and think tanks have joined hands with the European Union and created “Polymark” (www.polymark.org), a research project aimed at increasing the availability of recycled PET from used bottle to new bottle. Scheduled to run for 36 months, Polymark will have a budget of EUR 2.2m, of which the EU is contributing about EUR 1.5m.

Specifically, the project plans to raise the amount of rPET used in new packaging. Today, almost 30% of all produced rPET goes into new PET bottles, Polymark shows, adding that the low percentage is largely the result of the fact that the bottles collected are sometimes mixed with other PET bottles that are not suitable for reuse in food packaging. To address this problem, Polymark plans to come up with a new technology that will automatically detect and sort suitable PET bottles, working under the guidelines of the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA).

The project fits well with the European Commission’s new waste directive proposal aimed at contributing to a circular economy (for details, see Plasteurope.com of 04.07.2014). By far the most recycled plastic material in Europe, in 2012, more than 60 bn PET bottles (or 1.68m t) were recycled, Polymark says. That figure amounts to 52% of all discarded PET bottles sold in Europe. By 2017, the collection of PET bottles in Europe is forecast to reach 2.1m t – for details, see Plasteurope.com of 16.08.2013.

Polymark is made up of Petcore Europe (Brussels / Belgium; https://petcore-europe.org), the European Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW, Brussels; www.efbw.eu), Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE, Brussels; www.plasticsrecyclers.eu), the European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery (EPRO, Brussels; www.epro-plasticsrecycling.org), 4PET Recycling (Arnhem / The Netherlands; www.4petrecycling.com) and Closed Loop Recycling (Dagenham / UK; www.closedlooprecycling.co.uk). Its R&D members are ColorMatrix (Berea, Ohio / USA; www.colormatrix.com), the Fraunhofer Institut for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS, Dresden / Germany; www.ipms.fraunhofer.de/en), Pera Technology (Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire / UK; www.peratechnology.com) and S+S (Schönberg / Germany; www.sesotec.com).