European plastics makers say the quality of recycled PET is difficult to improve

European PET recyclers say average returns have fallen from 73% to 68% since 2011. This not only leads to higher costs, but recyclers must discard more materials to get high-quality regenerated PET.

Various factors contributed to the deteriorating production.

PET bottles are being made thinner and thinner, resulting in increased water content, and the flakes in these bottles are likely to be discarded during recycling.

In addition, the structure of PET waste becomes more and more diversified, the bottle structure accounted for more than 18%, and the proportion will gradually improve, not transparent PET and PET tray are moving into color in the PET market.

PRE vice President and PET Working Group chairman and Casper van den Dungen said that even if the PET is the most widely recycled plastic, but various stakeholders should be jointly to improve from the perspective of ecological design, increase the recycle ability.