How does PET plastic recycling work?
PET is one of the most used plastic packaging materials in the world
PET is fully recyclable, over and over
Bottle-to-bottle recycling means more sustainable packaging
Go behind the scenes
at a PET plastic recycling plant!
‘Used’ PET products are not waste. As the world’s most recycled plastic, PET has many potential after-life uses. Your PET water bottle or food tray can become a new PET bottle or food tray, which can in turn be recycled and made into a new product, again and again. Look for the #1 symbol on your plastic to know it is fully recyclable!
Every year, billions of PET bottles are collected across Europe, compressed into bales, and sent to [hundreds of] recycling plants. Learn more about the process below, and take a look at what happens to your plastic bottle after it is goes into the recycling bin.
Collection
After being sorted by consumers, PET bottles are collected and taken to a recycling plant along with other recyclable materials. Careful sorting and collection is crucial to avoid recyclable plastics unnecessarily ending up in landfill.
Separation
At the recycling plant, the various recyclable materials are separated out, with glass and metal moving into their own recycling streams.
Once all the non-plastic waste has been removed, high-value recyclable plastics like PET are separated using automatic systems or sometimes by hand. This is because the presence of other plastics would contaminate the PET recycling process, limiting its quality for reuse, reducing efficiency and contributing to waste.
Transportation
Once the PET has been collected, it is compressed for ease of transport. PET’s lightweight nature and its malleability allow large numbers of bottles to be compressed into one bale, reducing transport emissions.
Processing
These compressed bales of PET bottles are then sent to a processing centre.
After unloading the bales, PET bottles are separated into their colour streams and then ground up into small plastic flakes.
Washing & Decontamination
The PET flakes are washed to remove ground up contaminants such as lids, rings labels and glue.
After the washing process, they undergo a high-temperature decontamination process where migrated post-consumer substances and flavours are removed. Depending on the recycling technology, the material is melted either before or after this step and solid contaminants are separated by a melt filter.
Pelletizing
Melted and decontaminated PET flakes are then turned into spherical, crystalline-PET-pellets for the production of new PET products.
Reforming
These pellets are converted into preforms and transported from recycling plants to packaging and bottle manufacturers.
These PET preforms are heated and moulded into a new, recycled PET plastic bottle or tray.
Recycled PET is perfectly safe for use in food packaging and has been approved by agencies and governments across the world.
Beyond bottle-to-bottle
Bottle-to-bottle recycling is only one outcome for PET. Recycled PET can be transformed into many different products, some of which are probably around you right now!
In some cases, recycled PET is flaked and washed before being heated and stretched into fibre. This is then spun into recycled polyester yarn and turned into fabrics for use in seat belts, bags, carpets, roofing insulation and even clothing.
When all parts of the process are working correctly, PET bottles end up being made back into PET bottles, over and over again. The technology is tried and tested, and the capacity is there waiting to be used. Improving collection rates so that the industry gets its bottles back is crucial to boosting recycling and ensuring a more sustainable future for packaging.