What happens to it?

The PET Loop

PET stands for the plastic polyethylene-terephtalate, which combines a low weight with great resistance to breaking. No wonder that PET is on the advance as a packaging material all over Europe, especially in the beverage sector. And PET offers a further advantage: For the first time for plastic packaging, a closed product loop can now be set up for transparent PET bottles. Insiders call this "bottle-to-bottle" recycling.

To this end, the transparent PET bottles must be homogeneously separated from other plastic packaging before being forwarded for inexpensive, ecologically sound recycling in specialised plants.

In the preparation process, a separator sorts out labels and lids made of paper or other plastics. Then the bottles are shredded, washed and separated by density. After this, colour-sorted flakes are produced. These are subsequently processed into granulate in the extruder and finally used to manufacture new PET bottles.

Recycled PET granulate is also in great demand as a secondary raw material in the textile industry. Spinning machines process the granules recovered from coloured bottles into extremely fine PET fibres under the influence of heat.

These are used to produce fleece sweaters, sleeping bags and insulating materials. Recently the granulate has also been processed into packaging bands or deep-drawn films which in turn are used to produce other articles such as tubs.