Waste PET plastic may now be recycled through new
chemical and biological processes, which makes recycling
more challenging.
The Instituto Tecnológico del Embalaje, Transporte y Logística (ITENE) is breaking new
ground in recycling plastic waste through cutting-edge biological and chemical procedures.
These advances have been made to address the recycling of multilayered, mono-layered, and
pigmented polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic packages, which hitherto posed
significant mechanical recycling difficulties or were never recycled.
This study was carried out as part of the RecyPET project between June 2022 and June 2023,
revealing a significant link to both Spanish and EU sustainable economy goals. The main
goal is to manufacture alternative components for remanufacturing operations while reducing
the amount of waste destroyed and buried in dumps.
It is significant because PET packaging must include at least 25% recycled plastic according
to the Spanish Royal Decree on Packaging and Packaging Waste. The research findings
suggest that exemptions from the virgin plastics tax in Spain may exist. The levy was
imposed in January 2023 to promote broader sustainability in the country.
ITENE's research focused on two advanced depolymerization processes:
1.) Enzymatic depolymerization is a biological method that finds microorganisms that can
create the enzymes needed to break down PET trash into terephthalic acid (TPA), a monomer
that can be used in paints, varnishes, and cosmetics, as well as fresh recycled PET.
2.) In this method, bis-2-hydroxyethyl terephthalate (BHET), a monomer for producing fresh
recycled PET and usage in paints and varnishes, is produced by solvolysis of PET with
ethylene glycol and catalysts. With 1-2 hours of processing, the technique yields almost 98%,
yielding up to 700 grams of BHET per kilogram of processed PET.
A treat to the environment is ITENE’s adoption of recycling measures that are breaking new
ground, especially on colored bottles, tough multi-layered packaging, and residual materials
that used to be hard to recycle. Solving this puzzle has given an important push to packaging
factories in achieving their ecological objectives and generating more and better-recycled
materials. The sustainability triumph!
To turn recycling into habitual behavior, we should expand the scale of operations, enhance
the cost-efficiency, attract the involvement of the state and enterprises, and raise public
interest in reprocessed articles. Through teamwork, resource allocation, and perpetual
investigation, such skilled recycling systems might eventually play a crucial role in a
sustainable circular economy where everything is used without any waste through repeated
use of all materials.
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