TO INSURE THAT NEW BARRIER PET BOTTLES ARE

DESIGNED FOR RECYCLABILITY

he packaging industry is continually innovating to expand its markets. One of the current changes with the greatest potential concerns for recyclers lies in PET bottles. For a range of different barriers and tints are being considered that increasingly incorporates non-PET material and non-traditional colors into PET bottles. The most well known example of this is the plastic beer bottle first produced commercially for Miller Brewing by Continental PET Technologies in 1999.

If design for recyclability is given inadequate consideration, these new bottles have the potential to significantly increase the costs to separate or process and to reduce the marketability or market value of RPET bales sold by local recycling programs to reclaimers. If, on the other hand, recyclability is factored in the designs, past history demonstrates that downstream impacts can be eliminated or minimized. The EVOH liner in the PP cap on PET bottles to replace the PVC liner, or the “Big Foot” base to replace the HDPE base cup, are cases in point.

The Plastic Redesign Project is a multi state coalition of state and local public recycling officials that works with packagers to encourage redesigns that, while achieving their intended purpose for marketing or performance, at the same time do not increase net costs for recyclers. Its funding has been from the Environmental Protection Agency, the states of Wisconsin, New York, California and Arizona and Alameda County. (To read more about the Project, its purposes, members and work, as well as how to become a member yourself, can be found on the web at www.plasticredesign.org .)

As part of that process, the Project has produced the first independent and objective analysis of the current plastic barrier bottles to quantify the economic impact of each technology on recyclers. (A summary of the report can be found at http://www.plasticredesign.org.)

www.plasticredesign.org/files/execsumm.html .)

The report finds that the amber tinted, multilayer barrier bottle that uses “MXD-6” (a specialized form of nylon) will, were it rolled out into the market that it is aimed at, cause losses of between 2.3¢ and 5.9¢/lb. in the bale price paid to recyclers for PET, depending upon how much reclaimers automate additional color sortation in response. Compared to the average bale price for RPET of between 8¢-9¢/lb., that magnitude loss when market saturation is reached of about 70% of its average value would be very significant.

Although these impacts have not yet been seen, this is only because most sales to date have been limited to the small volumes sold in stadiums and convenience stores, on top of which very little of that away-from-home sales has been captured for recycling. Consequently, its current trace levels in the system are too minor to require the costly special handling that will be required when large quantities are involved or to impact a gaylord of flake.

This first generation barrier bottle, however, does not appear to be winning broader market acceptance due the fact that, because it is expensive to manufacture, plastic beer bottles carries a price premium that, outside of sports stadiums, is meeting consumer resistance. For this reason, the future seems to lie with a second generation barrier bottle under development and not yet in commercial production.

The first generation nylon barrier bottle was developed in secret in order to gain market advantage, and recyclers had little impact in its selection. However, with the current lull in the market for barrier bottles, now is the time when recyclers can have influence in the final shape of the second generation bottle, if they but act to exert their interests.

One way to do so is through the authority that 39 states have to influence the appropriate SPI code stamped on the bottom of the bottle as either a no. 1 (PET) or a no. 7 (other resin). The 39 states with SPI authority are:

States with SPI Code Authority

Because the no. 7 has a stigma of being non-recyclable, the consumer product companies have shown a strong-to-decisive preference for selecting a clear plastic bottles that is permitted to use a no. 1. One of the unique parts of the Project’s report on barrier bottles is its Technical Guidelines for objectively quantifying any economic impacts for new barrier bottle designs. These Guidelines provide a tool with which the states that have SPI authority can help educate product companies about the designs with the least negative impacts on recycling. They, in turn, will have clear information to give their bottle designers to work around those potential problems.

Anyone wishing to learn more about how to become involved in using the SPI number code process to constructively provide designers with the information that they need to insure the second generation bottle barrier bottle minimizes downstream impacts should contact the Project:

Peter Anderson

Plastic Redesign Project

(800) 449-1010

anderson@recycleworlds.org