FLAVOURS & TRENDS
Major innovation brings new levels of sustainability
With 30 years of experience in PET container solutions, SIPA has been designing, manufacturing and selling a wide range of technologies for the production, filling and packaging of PET containers, which are used for food and beverages, cleaning products, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
round the world, there is now a general agreement that the only possible development model capable of delivering a ‘zero waste’ future to the world is a circular economy. However, there are still a few cases of closed-circuit systems that can take a material, which has reached the end of its originally intended useful life, and make it new again – without generating more waste. The race is on for more development and nowhere is the pressure greater to come up with a solution than in the plastics packaging sector. That pressure is particularly strong in Europe. Not surprisingly, some of the most important responses to that pressure come from European concerns.
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The EU is cracking down on plastic waste, as it pushes forward its plans for a circular economy. It is limiting the use of single-use plastics and setting tough targets for the use of recycled materials. Under the single-use plastics directive, PET bottles will have to contain at least 25% recyclate by 2025, rising to 30% by 2030. It is estimated that to meet the 2030 target, the EU will require double its current rPET reprocessing capacity. Currently, less than 60% of bottle PET is collected for recycling and only 6% makes it back into new bottles. There is a clear and strong need for improved PET recovery and recycling technologies to make these targets achievable. Fortunately, moves are being made to meet that need.
A groundbreaking technology, for the production of PET bottles entirely out of post- consumer waste, fully integrates two processes that are normally kept separate – the creation of process-ready material from pre-washed flakes from used bottles and the production of new
18 | Beverage Essentials Handbook
bottles, or at least the preforms that are later blown into bottles, from the flakes. Production of new bottles using rPET is, in itself, an important contribution to the circular economy, but process integration brings additional advantages in terms of sustainability, since it is much more energy efficient than traditional methods.
Behind the process
The integrated process, XTREME Renew, is capable of using almost 30% less energy than a conventional PET preform-production system and involves CO2
emissions that are almost
80% lower – compared with traditional systems producing rPET containers, the emissions reduction is around 18%. In addition to this, XTREME Renew has a lower requirement on warehouse space that can amount to as much as 20%.
XTREME Renew starts with Vacurema technology, which decontaminates and removes moisture from the flakes under a vacuum; this technology uses less energy than alternative
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