A 12-strong European consortium has secured €1.9m of EU funding to develop processes to add value to recycled plastics for food contact applications.
The companies, who along with the EU will commit a total of €2.4m to the project, include Fraunhofer Institute, S+S Separation and Sorting Technology and Extricom from Germany, Smithers Rapra Technology, The University of Exeter and the British Plastics Federation from the UK, Dentis, Aliplast and Assocomaplast from Italy, MOS from the Netherlands and EuPC and CEN from Belgium.
The research will be used to develop a new process for the recycling of coloured and layered PET into food contact applications that cannot be processed by current PET recycling facilities.
The objectives are:
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To develop a test to validate recycled food contact materials with 100% reliability
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To create quality protocol for assuring the efficacy of plastics recycling processes for food contact applications with 100% reliability
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To development a process to recycle the 700,000 tonnes per year of currently unrecyclable coloured and layered PET that cannot be processed by existing PET recycling facilities for food contact packaging
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To formulate in-line monitoring to indentify contaminants from oxo-degradable additives, biodegradable plastics, bisphenol A and non-food contact compliant levels of chemical contamination
More information can be found at www.supercleanq.eu