2023-07-09 14:44:37
The milk industry is getting organized to improve bottle recycling, while France is lagging behind in plastic recycling overall. Paprec is thus testing a new technology in its factories.
From the bottle of milk to… the bottle of milk: recycling professionals are working hard to ensure that milk joins bottled water and sodas on the shelves of the circular economy, one of the levers to remove France its dunce cap when it comes to recycling plastics.
Cutting-edge new technology
Example near Châlons-sur-Saône, in the Paprec factory. Gleaming blue and yellow machines, conveyor belts in every direction: the French recycling leader is inaugurating a new technology so that the plastic in milk bottles (high-density polyethylene, HDPE) can be recycled in packaging, instead of the lower quality which was the norm.
Until recently, these materials were transformed into pipes for the construction industry – a kind of “downcycling”. “This technological step should not be underestimated”, explains Sophie Sicard, executive of Paprec. But for her, “the holy grail” is the return to “food packaging”.
Until now, only the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) of water and soda bottles and a small part of milk bottles benefited from an approval for a return to food contact following mechanical recycling. Recycled HDPE is now in the running to join it.
“For PET, we have an obligation in 2025 of 25% recycled packaging and for all plastics for bottles 30% in 2030”, indicates a spokesperson for Syndilait, which brings together major milk manufacturers.
Enough to extend the life of significant volumes of plastics: each year, nearly 2.2 billion liters of milk are sold in supermarkets, more than half of which are in bottles, which are 20% PET and 80 % in HDPE.
A meticulous industrial process
For the return to the shelves, the process, in the course of approval, is meticulous. Plastic balls, taken from the yellow bins of the French, contain bottles and trays, which must be separated into four streams according to the material (HDPE or PP) and the color (transparent or color), explains the director of the factory, Sylvia Blond, in front of the over-sorting lines.
Machines equipped with infrared sensors, developed by the manufacturer Pellenc ST, determine the properties of the material to separate the two types of plastic. For HDPE, the milk bottle will end up separated on one side, and the non-food streams on the other.
Second phase, grinding / washing: the bottles are cut “into small particles of one to two square centimeters”, explains David Verrien, production manager of the plant. Then, the flakes are washed to remove the residues and prepare the final phase of transformation into plastic granules: extrusion. The flakes are then melted at 200 degrees.
“We get a kind of chewing gum that we will refilter, to remove the foreign micro-particles. At the exit, we make spaghetti that we cut under water and cool to obtain small plastic balls , pellets”, explains David Verrien.
In the building where the smell of laundry floats, these granules are “re-heated to a few hundred degrees” to be decontaminated, in particular of their olfactory molecules. It is this decontamination that allows the recycled material to become food grade once more.
France is way behind on its recycling targets
Thanks to new processes, French manufacturers hope to increase the share of recycled plastic bottles, currently “around 60%” according to Sophie Genier, director of recycling for the eco-organization Citéo which manages the end of life of packaging.
There is urgency: on average, France recycles less than 30% of its plastic packaging, far from the 65% set by Brussels for 2025.
Sébastien Petithuguenin, CEO of the Paprec group – 03/29
The return to food packaging should make it possible to better remunerate manufacturers who claim to have difficulty balancing their accounts and deplore the lack of visibility of a “jagged market”:
“As soon as the plastics from oil drop, for us, it’s a disaster, the whole industry loses money,” said Sébastien Petithuguenin, managing director of Paprec.
He pleads for “obligations to incorporate recycled material, which create a market for recycled material, autonomous, with its price, high or low, it doesn’t matter”.
Clement Lesaffre with AFP
1688936105
#youth #milk #bottle
