Plastics Recyclers Europe released the design-for-recycling guidelines for PET trays. These guidelines, one for clear thermoforms and another for coloured thermoforms, set the basic principles to create PET trays which could be treated by future plastics recycling plants dedicated to this stream.The eco-design of PET trays is a first compulsory step to start the development of PET trays recycling. Additionally, this waste stream of 800,000 tonnes must be collected and sorted accordingly to create a dedicated waste stream. These two actions are essential in order to create a real recycling stream for PET trays and allow this specific packaging to help reaching the upcoming EU recycling targets.
As a proactive industry, the recyclers are calling the value chain, converters, retailers, brand owners, raw material producers, to join forces to build-up a PET trays platform in order to start a path to a value chain approach for PET trays similar to EPBP (European PET Bottle Platform – www.epbp.org).
The guidelines can be found under this link.
