How good is the quality of the recycled material?

Some conditions are impacting the quality of the recycled material, the quality per batch differs as well:

PET:

• Colour: Currently, only transparent PET has a valuable recycling stream. Coloured PET is declared as not recyclable, because there are no valuable applications for recycled coloured PET. The transparent rPET has a different colour, because it’s processed more often and this causes some changes of the molecular structure. One by-effect is the colour change.
• Processing: Sometimes it is necessary to adapt production processes for recycled materials and causes downgrading (use the recyclate for products with less quality requirements). Plastics are not endless recyclable.
• Food grade: rPET has food-grade. It’s currently the only recycled material with food-grade.
• Source: rPET food-grade comes from the deposit beverage bottles, e.g. from Germany, which has a separate recycling circle. Other rPET sources with food-grade are currently not available.

PE/ PP

• Colour: rHDPE has a green or grey look, because some different colours are mixed together. (That is different to the PET recycling.) We don’t have experiences with rPP yet.
• Processing: Sometimes it is necessary to adapt production processes for recycled materials and causes downgrading (use the recyclate for products with less quality requirements). Plastics are not endless recyclable.
• Food grade: rHDPE and rPP don’t have food-grade.
• Source: rHDPE/ rPP are made from post-consumer waste (PCR). This is why the recyclate isn’t as pure as virgin material.