At packaging exhibition Emballage 2014 in France, Sleever International launched a low density polyethylene (LDPET_) solution that allows bottles decorated with either a total or a partial sleeve to be treated and recycled to produce new bottles.
The company says the solution took five years of research and development.
It permits 100% recycling of sleeved bottles while producing a pure recycled resin, a prerequisite for the manufacturing of new bottles.
This was made possible using:
– The SI-TPEG/050 ZL film, which shows a spectrum recognized by infrared detection systems as being the same as PET, and a specific gravity below one that allows easy sorting via a floatation tank, and
– A printing process ensuring the specific non-bleeding inks attach perfectly to the sleeve during separation processes.
The resultant LDPET sleeve enables manufacturers to eliminate bottle rejection at the optical sorting stage – any bottle decorated with an LDPET sleeve (be it total or partial) will be oriented, without exception, towards the PET recycling channel.
It also produces a pure recycled resin without pollution risk due to ink migration or imperfect sorting.
The inks remain trapped in the flakes of sleeve that float to the surface of settling tanks, while PET flakes sink to the bottom.
This LDPET sleeve enables recyclers to deploy a systematic bottle-to-bottle recovery of PET bottles.
The LDPET sleeve is approved by the Association of Plastic Postconsumer Recyclers or APR to be used in the bottle to bottle channel.
The association represents 90% of the North American recycling capacity.
