Efforts underway to expand PET thermoforming recycling

PET thermoform recycling is making strides, but the road is long and many a footstep lay ahead.

PET bottles could be considered a poster child for polymer recycling, with almost 30 percent of the material reused. Only high density polyethylene recycling numbers come close, but the PET total still lags far behind the recapture rate of other substrates such as aluminum, steel and paper.

PET thermoform recycling is an emerging focus for plastics recyclers as more and more packaging is being made from that material. Thermoform recycling is just a fraction of PET bottle recycling in terms of volume, clocking in at 142 million pounds in 2021, according to the latest numbers from the National Association for PET Container Resources.

PET bottle recycling, which weighed in at more than 1.9 billion pounds for the same year, benefits from well-established systems, including bottle deposits in some states and widespread curbside collection.

But PET thermoforms are not bottles, and as such, they face challenges such as troublesome labels and adhesives. How they behave in recycling equipment at material recovery facilities catering to bottle sortation also is a consideration.

Craig Snedden is the president of Direct Pack Inc., the Azusa, Calif.-based company that is betting big on PET thermoform recycling as part of a larger packaging strategy.

The company is in the midst of opening up its second thermoform recycling location in Mexicali, Mexico, and has plans for a third in Rockingham, N.C., under the Direct Pack Recycling banner. They join the company's first PET thermoform recycling location in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Direct Pack recycles thermoforms into new food-grade thermoform packaging. Snedden said the work is not rocket science, but it does take an understanding of the unique characteristics of thermoformed packaging — and a will to put in the effort.

"It's just a matter of plastic operators to get out there and understand what the MRF system is and then apply their objectives and share it with the MRFs to get the material back. The feedstock is there in great abundance," Snedden said.

Snedden also sees the importance of thermoformers being out in front of any potential legislation, such as extended producer responsibility laws, which could impact the industry.

Direct Pack is conducting its own form of EPR by moving deeper into the recycling aspect of the thermoform business. The company has recycled more than 50 million pounds of thermoforms.

EPR is a legislative approach that places the cost burden of recapturing and recycling used materials on manufacturers. EPR is a growing trend in plastics, but essentially it is still in its infancy in this market. The concept has been around for decades and has been used in other industries to tackle particularly difficult and sometimes high-profile waste streams, such as automotive switches that contain mercury, for example.

"We feel that we are leading the industry in this area. We're leading the industry from the standpoint where we sense there may be EPR or extended producer responsibility laws coming into effect. Direct Pack is clearly working in advance of any of these mandates or laws. We are proving out technologies that allow us to make claims and perform on full circularity with the thermoform products that we manufacture," Snedden said.

Recycled PET ends up back in new thermoformed packaging produced by the company, which says it can comfortably include up to 60 percent recycled thermoform content in new 100 percent recycled-content products these days.

To help with the funding of the Mexicali facility, the nonprofit Recycling Partnership provided Direct Pack with a $400,000 grant. The money was awarded through the partnership's PET Recycling Coalition, formed just last year to help fund projects to increase PET recycling.

"There is a superhigh volume of good material that is currently not being recovered, and that is a huge opportunity to get more circularity in PET," said Adam Gendell, who leads the coalition for the partnership.

"I think the No. 1 challenge here is there is still a meaningful amount of work to be done to design thermoforms for recyclability," he said.

Thermoformed packaging is commonly found in departments in the outer rings of grocery stores, places where fresh food is typically prepared and packaged. Think of more expensive and higher-margin items in the bakery, deli and produce departments.

Some prepackaged foods come to stores in thermoformed containers already labeled and ready for sale. Other thermoforms are filled by store workers who then affix labels used at checkouts.

Those store-level labels, Gendell said, are "not the only obstacle, but I think that's a big one and maybe a linchpin for the whole category." It's these labels, often paper with aggressive adhesives, that can cause contamination in the PET stream.

Gendell explained that better labeling systems, when it comes to recycling consideration, do exist. But they have to overcome the inertia created by the existing labeling infrastructure already in place in stores.

But making changes at the store level to improve recyclability of thermoforms is all for naught if consumers do not have access to programs that actually recycle that packaging.

The federal government considers a material recyclable if at least 60 percent of the country has access to facilities that actually recycled that material. Getting the recyclable designation "should catalyze a really robust conversation about what the next step is in making that whole category more recyclable. And I'm hopeful that will heighten the imperative of getting better labels in a scaled way across thermoforms," Gendell said.

Snedden's Direct Pack sources recycled PET thermoforms from MRFs in several states to feed into the company's recycling and manufacturing system. But the firm is highlighting a particular relationship with the city of Phoenix as proof that thermoform recycling can, and does, work on a large scale. Direct Pack purchased 8.1 million pounds of recycled PET from the city last year, using the material to make new thermoform packaging. The city estimated 21 million thermoforms are diverted from landfill disposal each year.

"PET plastics are some of the most easily recycled plastics out there," Phoenix Public Works Deputy Director Eduardo Rodriguez said in a statement highlighting the amount of PET diverted. "That's why it's so important to get things like water bottles and plastic containers in the recycle bin. They can be recycled over and over again in many different forms."

Direct Pack's move into recycling in North Carolina makes sense as the new facility will be located adjacent to an existing thermoform packaging manufacturing site. Economic development officials were so keen on bringing the new recycling service to the area that they sold a 27-acre parcel of land to the company for a nominal amount.

"It really allows us to spread out recycling infrastructure and the MRFs we buy from all the way to the East Coast," said Andrew Jolin, director of sustainability for Direct Pack. "We're going to be buying from local recycling facilities. We're going to be washing and flaking, and then across the street, we re-extrude and thermoform."

Direct Pack would like to be operational by the end of the year at the new facility.

"It's really not that scary. It's challenging," Jolin said about thermoform recycling. "You have to go straight at it. You can't listen to all this false narrative that it's not recyclable and run from it."

Kate Eagles is a program director with the Association of Plastic Recyclers and studies the PET thermoform market. Her insights came across as hopeful but also realistic when it comes to market conditions.

"We're not quite there yet, but I see a path forward to getting there," she said. "I think it's fair to say the strength and diversity of markets is still a challenge. But we are optimistic."

She sees a combination of product design for recyclability, market demand and "a little push from legislation" as key components to push PET thermoform recycling higher. These factors could combine to show the middle pieces of the recycling chain — MRFs and plastic reclaimers — that thermoforms are worthy of more attention, she said. "I'm optimistic that we will see change. I think we just need to keep pushing it forward."

A study by Resource Recycling Systems, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based consultancy, released in late 2020 examined the PET thermoform recycling market. The study estimated that 1.6 billion pounds of PET thermoforms were produced in the United States and Canada in 2018 with a recycling rate of 9 percent.

The report estimated PET thermoforms represent less than 1 percent — between 0.25-0.75 percent — of all material that comes into a typical MRF and that a PET bottle bale exiting the sortation facility could contain between 2-12 percent thermoforms.

Eagles said plastic reclaimers can use — and even welcome — a certain amount of thermoforms into their systems designed to recycle PET bottles. But higher percentages — and what's "higher" varies from location to location — can result in yield loss.

"Bottle reclaimers are designed to run bottles. That's their core business. Running thermoforms is just a bit different, and it does impact the process," Eagles said. "They are PET, but they just run a little differently. … You are going to have more yield loss if you have a higher percentage of thermoforms in most cases."

Getting PET thermoforms recognized as being widely recycled also will help boost the market, Eagles said.

The Federal Trade Commission's Green Guides only allow a material to be considered recyclable if at least 60 percent of the nation's population has access to programs recapturing the material.

PET Thermoforms, according to a study by the nonprofit Sustainable Packaging Coalition, checks in at 54 percent, including 17 percent where the packaging is explicitly accepted and 37 percent with it is implicitly accepted. The SPC data indicates 19 percent of locations where they are explicitly prohibited, another 10 percent where they are implicitly not allowed and 7 percent where acceptance is unclear.

NAPCOR's latest estimate of 142 million pounds of PET thermoform recycling for 2021 is up from 45 million pounds in 2011, the first year the trade group published data, and 126 million pounds in 2019, according to a 2020 report.