Circularity Study on PET Bottle-To-Bottle Recycling
.jpg)
1
Department of Applied Life Sciences, FH Campus Wien, University of Applied Sciences, Helmut-Qualtinger-Gasse 2, 1030 Vienna, Austria
2
Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging, Giggenhauser Straße 35, 85354 Freising, Germany
3
Department for Microbiology and Cell Culture, OFI–Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology, Franz-Grill-Straße 5, Object 213, 1030 Vienna, Austria
4
Starlinger & Co GmbH, Sonnenuhrgasse 4, 1060 Vienna, Austria
5
Eunomia, 37 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4QS, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Rajesh Kumar Jyothi
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7370; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137370
Received: 2 June 2021 / Revised: 24 June 2021 / Accepted: 25 June 2021 / Published: 1 July 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Sustainability of Packaging)
With the European Green Deal, the importance of recycled products and materials has increased. Specifically, for PET bottles, a high content of recycled material (rPET) is demanded by the industry and consumers. This study was carried out in a lab environment replicating real-life industrial processes, to investigate the possible impacts on rPET quality over eleven recycling loops, aiming to use high amounts of rPET repetitively. A cycle included extrusion, solid state polycondensation (SSP), a second extrusion to simulate bottle production, hot wash and a drying step. 75% rPET and 25% virgin PET were extruded in eleven cycles to simulate a recycling and production process. Samples underwent chemical, physical and biological analysis. The quality of the rPET material was not adversely affected. Parameters such as coloring, intrinsic viscosity, concentration of critical chemicals and presence of mutagenic contaminants could be positively assessed. The quality of the produced material was likely influenced by the input material’s high standard. A closed loop PET bottle recycling process using an rPET content of up to 75% was possible when following the proposed process, indicating that this level of recycled content can be maintained indefinitely without compromising quality.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
circular economy; polyethylene-terephthalate; PET; post-consumer recycling (PCR) material; bottle-to-bottle; recycling; closed-loop
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Pinter, E.; Welle, F.; Mayrhofer, E.; Pechhacker, A.; Motloch, L.; Lahme, V.; Grant, A.; Tacker, M. Circularity Study on PET Bottle-To-Bottle Recycling. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7370. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137370
AMA Style
Pinter E, Welle F, Mayrhofer E, Pechhacker A, Motloch L, Lahme V, Grant A, Tacker M. Circularity Study on PET Bottle-To-Bottle Recycling. Sustainability. 2021; 13(13):7370. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137370
Chicago/Turabian StylePinter, Elisabeth, Frank Welle, Elisa Mayrhofer, Andreas Pechhacker, Lukas Motloch, Vera Lahme, Andy Grant, and Manfred Tacker. 2021. "Circularity Study on PET Bottle-To-Bottle Recycling" Sustainability 13, no. 13: 7370. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137370
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
