European PET bottle recycling surges

European PET bottle recycling surges

Today Petcore announced that in 2002, European PET bottle collection increased by more than 30% compared to the year before. In total, European sorting stations offered 449,000 tonnes of sorted and baled PET to recycling outlets. Polyester fibre remains the largest RPET application with a share of 70.5%. Significant growth was observed in bottle-to-bottle recycling, up 60% to an overall market share of 8.1%. The polyester sheet market for RPET declined to 9.6%, probably the result of increased imports of low priced PET from the Far East. Strapping volumes remained stable with a market share of 8.7%. Frank Koelewijn, Petcore's Director General, said he expects this rubust growth to continue. "Europe is now the largest PET recycling region in the world; we congratulate the citizens of Europe for this huge success."

"Before the end of this decade we will have reached the magical number of one million tonnes. This assuming that Germany will pick up their fair share" says Mr. Koelewijn. "The introduction of a deposit in the German market has led to chaos: citizens are unable to bring their empty bottles back because return systems are virtually non-existent". According to Mr. Koelewijn, this is not only bad for the environment, but also for the economy and society as a whole. Last year, he reports, Germany was the country with the highest growth in PET recycling. This year, we expect to lose 60,000 tonnes of RPET against our forecast in Germany and estimates for the combined drinks and recycling industry indicate an economic loss of € 4 billion for 2003 alone, representing many thousands of job losses.

Other countries with high growth rates in PET recycling include Austria, the Baltic states, Belgium, France, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Switzerland.