Recycling and granulators | process feature
Recycling within fi lm and sheet extrusion now encompasses everything from reclaiming scrap material to creating new business opportunities. Lou Reade reports
Second time round
Once upon a time, recycling was what canny processors did to recover off-cuts – by putting them back through the hopper. Now, re-using and re-processing polymers is big business. In sheet production, PET is a critical material – with
many companies now ramping up their production of food-grade materials from recycled PET. US-based Ecostar, for example, is continuing to look for improve- ments in the recycling and production of recycled PET (RPET) thermoform fl ake and extruded sheet. Its 70,000 sq ft facility is dedicated to recycling PET
by reclaiming plastic bottles and thermoforms and turning them into food and non-food grade fl ake and sheet. It runs 365 days a year, purchasing bales of post-consumer PET bottles and mixed bales of post-consumer thermoform packaging. When building the facility, test loads of PET thermo-
forms were used in order to design the plant with the capability to process them. “Today, Ecostar is able to recycle 100% thermoform
bales and use them directly in our sheet extrusion blend,” said Megan Moore, process engineer at Ecostar. “We have produced sheet comprised of over 80%
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thermoform fl ake and used that sheet to manufacture BlisterBox, as well as custom thermoforms. We are also including thermoform fl ake as a component of our extrusion blend.” In 2009, Napcor said around 1.4 billion lbs of PET
thermoform packages were produced in North America annually. Today, most municipalities still do not accept thermoform packaging for recycling. Despite this, Ecostar is exploring how to use thermoform bales in a composite mixture with bottle bales to give more versatility in processing – in recycling as well as in extrusion. Despite the many complexities in the process,
Ecostar is still trying to perfect a way to develop high quality fl ake and sheet from recycled thermoforms. “There are a number of issues we are trying to
address,” said Moore. “Adhesives can be diffi cult to remove, as can paper labels – resulting in a pronounced ‘amber’ colour in the extruded sheet. Ecostar is working with one of the largest labelling material manufacturers in the world to create an adhesive that allows labels to be removed in standard washing conditions in the recycling process.”
December 2012/January 2013 | FILM & SHEET EXTRUSION 11
Ecostar creates PET fl ake and sheet from
post-consumer bottles and
thermoformed products
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