While the PET bottle industry is actively working to make all PET bottles as recyclable as possible, only non-colored and lightly-tinted blue PET bottles offer reclaimers a high value in today’s recycle market. According to a recent report by Plastic Technologies, Inc., (PTI) an opportunity to create a market for non-colored problematic PET bottles may be available that does not exist today.
“The goal is to find a way to allow clear, but problematic bottles, that yellow when recycled to benefit an amber recycling stream. It’s possible that yellowing can be offset by blending them with amber colored bottles to yield an acceptable amber color for reuse,” says Frank Schloss, PhD, Materials Evaluation Group, Plastic Technologies, Inc.
The use of PET to produce bottles and containers for oxygen sensitive products as well as carbonated beverages is limited to some degree by its barrier properties. These limitations can be overcome through the use of oxygen scavengers, multilayer structures and plasma coatings. But unfortunately, other than some plasma coating options, these barrier solutions also present recycling difficulties, explains Schloss. The oxygen scavenger and multilayer barrier bottles present PET reclaimers with issues that cause the rPET materials to yellow after melt reprocessing.
