Polymer producers bottle it

As part of such environmental initiatives, the products created at the hands of the petrochemicals sector are being targeted. PET bottles are at the forefront of the crusade to reuse and recycle, saving on raw material costs and reducing the number of bottles that find themselves in land-fill sites.

Quite how the potential new influx of recycled PET will affect the virgin PET market remains to be seen.

“At present, the pricing difference between virgin PET chip and recycled PET chip for use in making food-grade plastic bottles is about 20-25% – recycled PET certainly being cheaper. Of course, the cost of recycled resin always fluctuates depending on the on availability, but recycled PET is always cheaper,” explains Alan Lu, chemical market associate at energy consultancy firm CMA.

“Eventually recycled PET will come to have a more visible share in the market, but its share is suppressed due to the limited availability of plastic feedstock. Around the world, approximately 25% of PET plastic is recycled; if this were to increase then recycled PET’s market share would increase somewhat,” adds Thomas Friedlaender, head of PET recycling at Krones.

Waste not, want not

The environmental impact of discarded plastics is substantial. Plastic takes a long time to decompose and often ends up in landfills where it threatens to pollute aquifers, not to mention being unsightly.

The ease with which such waste can be reused is, however, less widely known. Between 80% and 85% of a bottle is PET, with the rest being caps and labels. Of this, around 70% to 75% is reclaimed, reducing the need and expense of producing virgin PET.

Bottled water companies have been at the forefront of the bid to increase the volumes of their product being recycled. Considering the significant number of mineral water bottles sold each year in the Middle East, this may go some way towards reducing the volume of non-biodegradables that wind-up in land fill.

UAE-based Masafi sells 240 million litres of bottled water each year in the region.

In July, Masafi rolled out its Carbon Action Plan which aims to reduce the environmental impact of its product through increasing the percentage of recycled material used in its packaging, and reducing the feedstock and fuel needed to produce PET.

“We recently entered into a partnership with Horizon Technologies of Fujairah that allows us to send all of our pre-processed plastics to them to be recycled. Previously we sold them to municipality approved dealers that then sold the material to Chinese manufacturers to be worked into non-food plastic applications. Now the recycled PET can be channeled into new applications in the UAE itself,” explains Natascha Edelman, head of marketing at Masafi.

Since beginning its corporate recycling services, encouraging firms to send back used PET bottles for recycling and collecting any bottles used by companies with 1000-plus employees, recycling rates have risen by 30% and Masafi seeks to build on such figures.

Old to new

Horizon’s recycling facility aims to make full use of the increasing numbers of PET bottles that are being collected in the Middle East and turn them into clean PET flakes that can be sold and reused.

At present, it is seeking to create agreements with local municipalities and mineral water companies throughout the UAE to provide PET feedstock for its facilities. Once fully commissioned, the plant aims to recycle around 20 000 tonnes per annum of PET.

“PET recycling is at present in the very nascent stages of development, but it should begin to develop much more throughout the world and the region,” says Hemant Gupta, head of sales and marketing for Horizon Technologies.

“In the Middle East, collection of used bottles still lacks organisation – especially when compared to Europe. At the moment, therefore, there are still some problems in terms of getting adequate feedstock, but I am confident that this will pick-up with all of the new efforts being made.”

“There are not too many PET recycling plants in the UAE as the industry is still developing. There are basic behavioral challenges that need to be addressed – the low level of environmental awareness and involvement, not to mention logistical challenges such as the lack of basic facilities for segregating waste. If recycling is to increase then both the private and the public sector must take action.

The market for recycled PET is becoming huge due to the many possible uses for the PET and also due to consumer’s increasing preference to go green,” declares Habiba Al Marashi, chairperson of UAE focused Emirates Environmental Group.
 

At the moment, there certainly are not enough people involved in PET recycling and this needs to increase. We have a great potential to recycle all plastic within the UAE, but the political will of the government is needed to push companies to recycle PET more and use recycled PET,” adds Saad Al Numairy, environment advisor to the UAE’s Federal Environment Agency.

Perhaps surprisingly, around the world, the biggest cost involved in PET recycling, is the expense of purchasing the used PET bottles to use as feedstock. Depending on the collection system in every country, whoever takes the materials usually sells them.

If PET recyclers throughout the Middle East can develop agreements with local municipalities, such as the ones that Horizon propose, to take waste off their hands or even collect the PET from users, then costs may potentially be minimised.

“Price and quality are the two main challenges to overcome in PET recycling, along with the major issue of feedstock availability. The key factor is really ensuring long-term availability to feedstock; if you want to make an investment, you have to be sure that you will have continuous access to feedstock.

The problem is in finding a reliable supply that does not fluctuate too much,” explains Friedlaender.

The process

“The most important factor determining the success of recycling PET is the process of washing. This will prove critical in determining the quality of the PET produced, with any mistake having a huge impact. You cannot compensate for a super cleaning process,” states Friedlaender.

The process of recycling PET begins with the bottles being ground and pelletised, then the washing and separating processes follows. This is the same regardless of whether the PET produced is destined for food grade application or non-food grade.

The so called ‘super cleaning process’ then follows. This eliminates contaminants and anything else that is not PET, such as caps, labels, glues, filling-goods and residues.

Within the recycling industry at large, there are numerous technologies available. For example, in terms of the flake washing process, some utilise a hot caustic wash followed by a detergent wash while others may omit one of the former.

Once cleaned, these recycled PET flakes have poor material flow characteristics and may contain other volatile organic contaminants and particulate matter that would limit their utility.

The processes of extrusion, melt filtration, solidification and pelletising are normally used to remedy such inadequacies. Such processes are not, however, without side effects – the acetaldehyde content and colour of the PET flakes are usually affected, not to mention the associated additional capital, utility and operational costs for these operations.

“Unlike most other companies in the recycling business, Krones offers the complete package of recycling facilities – if they have the feedstock then we deliver all of the facilities to process the materials and recycle,” says Friedlaender.

“We did not want to develop anything that has been on the market already, so we looked at it from a cost side and from a potential market side so that our customers could purchase and operate such a plant efficiently and cost-effectively,” he adds.

“The idea was to provide a very compact plant that could easily be placed at the site where PET bottles themselves are manufactured. It is a good idea for companies who recycle PET to use recycled materials and feedstock themselves and manufacture new bottles, since it creates a huge saving in logistics costs.”

The finished product

In regards to the quality of the recycled PET, it is often difficult to determine since it is harder to determine you input material in comparison to the production of virgin PET.

Still, despite the concerns of some petrochemicals traders, Friedlaender is certain that with adequate cleaning, recycled PET is of sufficient quality to use for the same applications as virgin PET, including those that come into direct contact with food.

“Lots of recycled PET is brought into China where it is used as a raw material to produce some low grade fibres,” explains Lu. This is not to say, however, that the quality of products containing a percentage of recycled PET is necessarily less than those purely made of virgin PET.

“With many of our customers, we have found that there is often less disruption involved in moving from using virgin PET to recycled, as opposed to changing your supplier of virgin resin,” says Friedlaender.

Final word

Realistically, the recycled PET resin market is unlikely to become a major rival to huge virgin PET production plants any time soon. With improved collection systems for used bottles and the increasing number of recycling facilities coming online both worldwide and in the Middle East, recycled PET is set to increase its market share in the coming years.

Being environmentally friendly may well turn out to not only be good PR, but also highly profitable.