Polymark gets a sense for plastics recycling

Only 30 per cent of Europe’s plastic is recycled and EU regulations prevent plastic used for non-food packaging being used as food or drink wrapping after recycling.

Recyclable plastic waste must be sorted into food and non-food packaging before it can be recycled for new food and drink packaging products, but the process isn’t widely used and most food and drink packaging uses virgin plastics.

Now, an EU-funded project called Polymark aims to rectify this with an innovative marking and sensor-based sorting system that identifies plastic previously used for food and drink packaging.

‘Our system is 98 per cent efficient. We believe that sensor-based sorting technology is key to enabling a circular economy for plastics,’ said Polymark project coordinator Estela Izquierdo from trade association European Plastic Converters.

The project focused on widely used polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which can easily be recycled into materials such as carpet fibre but could be utilised further thanks to the new system.