Petcore Europe Depolymerisation Working Group enhancing the circularity of PET!
What our members say
Slavik Kasztelan,
Program Manager “Biomass to chemicals” and “Petrochemicals”,
IFPEN
"IFP Energies nouvelles and its subsidiary Axens are eager to tackle the challenge of bringing to the market competitive processes for recycling plastics and to produce bio-based polymer precursors and make circular economy a reality. We are therefore glad to join the SIG efforts to accelerate the success of monomer recycling technologies."
About Petcore Europe Depolymerisation Working Group
The European Parliament has endorsed the work made by the European Commission in making the plastics industry more circular from a predominantly linear business model. It has become incumbent on the plastic industry to metamorphose into an industry that reduces its impact on the environment, basically reducing the use of finite feedstock, impact on greenhouse gases, and waste to nature. PET is a significant polymer (plastic) that is used mainly in the packaging and textile sector.
Mechanical recycling of PET has been the pace setter for many years, presenting PET as a most suitable recyclable material, however advancements in packaging and wider use of PET has led to more complexity of recovery after use. The advent of monomers from post-consumer PET has also been around for years, but not commercially and technically available at scale. Due to the interest to develop more circularity of the PET value chain, monomer recycling of PET becomes feasible and is gaining momentum.
Petcore Europe, the industry organization representing the whole PET value chain, has established a focal “Petcore Europe Depolymerisation Working Group” to establish a strong and sustainable value chain in the development of re-using the monomers from PET waste. The mission of this group is to facilitate a platform to position PET Depolymerisation recycling as a viable addition to the established mechanical recycling process, enhancing further the circularity of PET. This platform will use the networking and outreach of the Petcore Organization to interact with legislators, regulators, NGOs and other stakeholders to ensure chemical recycling of PET is an acceptable business and fulfills the future requirements of business environment. The Group will work to ensure health and safety aspects as well as product acceptance is achieved.
PET Depolymerisation Recycling
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What is PET Depolymerization Recycling? PET Depolymerisation Recycling is innovative. It opens a completely new perspective on how to deal with the concerns about plastics and plastic waste. Bringing the PET bottles and food containers as well as polyester textiles back to its constituents, monomers or low molecular weight components that allow purification means in principle endless re-use of these PET building blocks. This will improve the circularity of PET since colors, additives and other polymers in multi-layer constructions will be from now on fully recyclable. PET Depolymerisation Recycling helps solving the waste problem by giving all PET waste value. After all efforts from consumers and by the industry to collect and sort the plastic, we can give a guarantee that PET is recycled and does not leave the circle to incineration or landfill.
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PETCORE Europe, the industry organization representing the whole PET value chain, launched the “Working Group - WG” to establish a strong and sustainable value chain in the development of re-using the monomers from PET waste.
Christian Crépet, Board Member of PETCORE Europe, explains: "The mission of this group is to facilitate a platform to position PET Depolymerisation recycling as a viable addition to the established mechanical recycling process, enhancing the circularity of PET."
The WG will use the networking and outreach of the PETCORE Europe Organization to interact with legislators, regulators, NGOs and other stakeholders to ensure Depolymerisation Recycling of PET is an acceptable business and fulfills the future requirements of business environment. The Group will work to ensure health and safety aspects as well as product acceptance is achieved.
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The group has developed a Position Paper related to the Depolymerisation of PET for circularity summarizing the views of the participants on how depolymerisation recycling will support circularity.
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Environmental Benefits
Closing the loop by creating recycled,
virgin-like raw material
Difficult to recycle material - moving from landfill and energy recovery to infinite recycling
Decreasing the CO2 footprint introducing recycled monomers
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