Publish: Jul. 06, 2022
With a share of around 30%, polyethylene (PE) is the most widely used plastic in the world today. In Germany alone, more than half of all plastic packaging is made of polyethylene. PE comes in two forms: high-density (HDPE) and low-density (LDPE).
Polyethylene is very easy to recycle, provided it is not bonded with other plastics to form composite materials. Unlike other plastics, PE is often recycled with the same function: canisters become new canisters, film becomes new film, etc.
Polypropylene (PP) is a resistant and flexible plastic very similar to HDPE in terms of its properties and structure. With a market share of around 21%, it accounts for the second-highest proportion in the packaging sector in Germany after PE.
In principle, PP is also well suited for recycling. It can either be processed as a recyclate for reuse or remelted directly into new products. In Europe, recycled plastics can generally only be reused for food packaging after an EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) opinion to be reused for food packaging. This applies in principle to all recycled plastics that come into contact with food. Since EFSA does not yet have sufficient data on r-PP from mechanical recycling, the material is generally not approved for food contact. For this reason, r-PP is not usually used to make new packaging, but is used to make items such as garden furniture, park benches and appliances.
PET is best known as the material used to make disposable and reusable bottles for beverages. However, a lot of other plastic packaging is also made of PET.
As far as recycling is concerned, PET is the plastic with the best recycling balance sheet in Germany. This fact is mainly thanks to the deposit system for disposable beverage containers introduced in 2003. As a result, 99% of all PET bottles are collected and used as the basis for new products. PET can be processed again and again into high-quality products, and it retains its properties even after being reprocessed many times over. For example, a new PET beverage bottle can be made entirely of recycled PET.
Recycling only PET would be far from enough to meet ambitious climate targets in the future. The European association Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) sees great potential for recycling polyethylene (PE), the second most processed plastic in the EU at around 9 million tons per year. Although PE is readily recyclable, current recycling rates of low-density PE are only around 31%. According to PRE, those rates could be higher. The organization states that plastic film waste, for instance, is still perceived as a difficult-to-process material stream, even though Europe has already proven that stretch film recycling is entirely possible.
In order to be able to maximize recycling potential, products would have to be designed with more thought given to their future recycling on the one hand, and existing recycling technologies would have to be further developed on the other. The organization also calls for the introduction of harmonized collection and sorting processes at the EU level in order to increase both the quantity and the quality of the collected waste.
The recycling of PP bottles, containers, and thermoplastics is also coming more and more into focus and represents another important section of the recycling market. Recycled PP can be used to produce a wide variety of end products for different applications. However, similar to PET waste, the quality and condition of collected PP waste varies. Often, the quality of the collected material is very low. Therefore, it is also necessary to continue developing PP recycling technologies and provide new technical solutions in order to maximize the recycling potential of polypropylene.
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