rPET in Food Packaging

Until recently, most rPET has been used for non-food and non-beverage related products. However, new “Superclean” technologies have now been developed and approved for the processing of post-consumer PET for food packaging application.

Superclean processing involves the removal of volatile contaminants with maintenance/raising of intrinsic viscosity (IV). These proprietary processes generally involve combinations of standard mechanical recycling processes with non-mechanical procedures such as high temperature washing, high temperature and pressure treatments, use of pressure/catalysts and filtration, to remove polymer entrained contaminants and raise IV.

Commercially significant European examples include the physical recycling processes employed by United Resource Recovery Corporation (URRC), Cleanaway PET International GmbH, EcoclearTM (Wellman International) and the VacuRema process (EREMA) which are all US FDA approved and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) compliant.  

The new European regulation on plastics (EC No 282/2008) requires that recycled plastics used in contact with food should only be obtained from processes which have been assessed for safety by EFSA. PET recycling process are validated for food contact by the EFSA on the basis of the process passing a “Challenge Test”.

This was also the method adopted by the US FDA when assessing recycling technologies for plastics to be used in food contact.  The challenge test involves spiking the material with a cocktail of toxic substances that represent the various categories of chemicals that could be absorbed by PET.

These cocktails simulate cleaning solvents, insecticides or weed-killers which may be placed in PET bottles before collection for recycling. Following exposure of the polymer to the surrogate contaminants, the polymer would be subjected to the recycling process.

Subsequent analysis of the polymer for those contaminants would demonstrate the efficacy of the recycling process. Processes that reduce contamination below the acceptable limits are considered “Superclean” processes.