The association Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE, Brussels / Belgium; www.plasticsrecyclers.eu) has announced that it will develop specific recycling guidelines for PET trays in Europe. In the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of PET trays by the packaging industry. However, this increase has not been adequately addressed in the end-of-life solutions, PRE claims.

PET recyclers cannot handle PET trays because of their different composition (multi-layers, multi-material combinations etc.) when compared to beverage bottles, while mixed plastics recyclers do not want the trays because of their incompatibility with polyolefins.

According to the association, every year 700,000 t of PET trays put on the EU market are not recycled. To remedy the situation, PRE believes it is necessary to act at the design stage of the product. As a first step, it will start developing its own recycling guidelines. These will enable the value chain to assess the recyclability of the products and move towards recyclable PET trays. In a second step separate sorting streams will have to be created to enable PET tray recycling, says PRE. As a proactive industry, the European recyclers say they are willing to cooperate with more stakeholders to further develop these guidelines. All trays have an important packaging function but need adapt to recyclability requirements in order to grow in the years to come.