EU funding for food contact recycled plastics project
A 12-strong European consortium has secured €1.9m of EU funding to develop processes to add value to recycled plastics for food contact applications.The companies, along with the EU, will commit a total of €2.4m to the project. The research will be used to develop a new process for the recycling of coloured and layered PET into food contact applications that cannot be processed by current PET recycling facilities.
The objectives are:
- To develop a test to validate recycled food contact materials with 100% reliability
- To create quality protocol for assuring the efficacy of plastics recycling processes for food contact applications with 100% reliability
- To develop a process to recycle the 700,000 tonnes per year of currently unrecyclable coloured and layered PET that cannot be processed by existing PET recycling facilities for food contact packaging
- To formulate in-line monitoring to indentify contaminants from oxo-degradable additives, biodegradable plastics, bisphenol A and non-food contact compliant levels of chemical contamination (European Plastics News Weekly e-Bulletin,