Four of Europe’s major associations representing the plastics industry - Petcore Europe, PlasticsEurope, Plastics Recyclers Europe, and VinylPlus - have banded together on a new initiative called PolyREC.
The idea behind PolyREC was to put in place a shared data collection system – RecoTrace - to monitor, verify, and report plastics recycling volumes and uptake data in Europe. In this way, the participants in the initiative aim to provide traceability, transparency, and trust in recycled materials along the entire plastics value chain.
“Setting up mechanisms that evidence progress in driving plastic circularity in a transparent manner is a must if we are to meet the EU targets,” said PRE’s President, Ton Emans.
The RecoTrace system used by PolyREC has been built on the Recovinyl platform, which was developed and has been used by VinylPlus for 20 years to collect recycling data.
As VinylPlus’ managing director Brigitte Dero noted, the circularity of plastics is a key opportunity to enhance plastics products sustainability.
“The European PVC industry, through VinylPlus, has learnt the importance of monitoring and progress reporting. We are therefore pleased to share this long-time experience and work collaboratively with all plastic industry sectors to raise traceability and transparency in recycled plastics along the entire plastics value chain,” she declared.
PolyREC comes at a time where monitoring polymers circularity is paramount, especially in the context of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA). This system will be able to fulfil the CPA objectives, legislative traceability demands, and industry wide plastic recycling pledges.
Petcore Europe has been pioneering the monitoring of PET recycling in Europe since the 1990s, observed Petcore Europe’s Managing Director Christian Crépet.
“Its participation into a joint monitoring recycled plastics scheme for the EU is both timely and logical,” he said.
“Capitalising on our solid experience in providing key figures of the European plastic industry, we see this as a key milestone in our journey towards circular plastics," added Virginia Janssens, PlasticsEurope Managing Director.