PET is by far the most recycled plastic material that has been recycled in Europe, with the equivalent of around 65 billion bottles recycled in 2013, says trade organisation PETCORE Europe. Chairman of the Brussels-based organisation Roberto Bertaggia said: “The demand for PET as the packaging material of choice continues to grow, penetrating new markets with innovative applications. The extraordinary ability of PET to be recycled and reused into a wide variety of end uses is part of this success story and is helping towards the movement to a circular economy in Europe.

He went on to say, “From a sustainability perspective, our industry is thrilled that last year the equivalent of around 56% of PET containers in circulation were collected for reclamation and recycling. There is however still a huge disparity in collection rates amongst the Member States, and all stakeholders need to work together to align the collection processes to deliver the increased recycling objectives recently announced by the European Commission” he added.

Casper van den Dungen, PET Chairman at PRE (Plastics Recyclers Europe) and a Board member of PETCORE Europe, underlined that “the overall collection of PET bottles in Europe at 1.64 million tonnes represents a 7% increase on last year. We still have considerable spare recycling capacity to enable us to recycle more”.

He continued,” however one of the factors that will reduce our ability to utilise our available spare capacity is the increasing complexity of some collected baled bottles. Improved and standardised collection and sorting processes would help address this situation”.