NAPCOR Signals Surge in PET Thermoform Recycling

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) announced that the number of PET thermoforms recycled has continued to grow over the past five years. The association, in its new report, highlights several barriers that tend to slow down PET thermoform recycling. Incidentally, the U.S. and Canada together recycled 139 million pounds of PET thermoform packaging in 2018, significantly higher by 60% from the prior year.

According to NAPCOR, one of the major issued faced by PET stream is the presence of non-PET packages that looks very similar to PET in appearance, which in turn contaminates the stream. The different sizes, shapes and configurations of thermoforms create mechanical challenges in processing facilities. Also, NAPCOR believes that labels are one of the biggest barriers to recyclability.

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The Association foresees acute shortage of postconsumer PET material in the future, as leading beverage brands commits to increase the use of rPET content in bottles and containers. NAPCOR reiterated its commitment to work through the various challenges, so as to achieve increased acceptance of PET thermoforms in domestic recycling streams.