Dutch recyclers embracing ‘tray-2-tray’ technology

The Netherlands – Approximately 10% of household plastic packaging waste consists of PET trays in the Netherlands. The volume has surged in recent years and will continue to do so in the future. That’s why Dutch firm 4Pet Recycling is building a state-of-the-art facility it says will be the world’€™s first site to exclusively process PET trays on a large scale to be turned back into food-grade trays.

The new recycling facility will open its doors in the city of Duiven by mid-2018 and is being partly funded by the Dutch Waste Packaging Fund.

This development is very promising, according to Cees de Mol van Otterloo, director of the Waste Packaging Fund. He explains that existing technology only allows recyclers to use PET trays as a secondary flow when recycling PET bottles. He stresses that there is an ‘upper limit’ on the amount of PET trays that may be used without hurting the quality.

‘Due to the removal of the PET trays from the mixed-plastic waste flow using this new technology, the quality of this source increases thereby making an important step towards further improvement in high-quality recycling of raw materials,’ De Mol says.

‘In our view, this is a new opportunity for PET recycling to work alongside the existing worldwide PET bottle market,’ comments Jean-Loup van de Wiele, CEO of 4PET. ‘We are therefore very pleased that we can offer the first worldwide closed-loop recycling solution. For many years we have been “Bottle 2 Bottle” and now we are “Tray 2 Tray",’ he adds.