According to the data spread from the CONAI, 480 kilotons of rubbish coming from plastic packaging was directed to recycling in 2003. Up until now, for security reasons, recycling was not able to create materials destined to contact with food. But something starts changing. The present situation, as regards plastic coming from recycling processes and destined to new applications of food packaging, can be synthetically summarized as follows:
• use of recycled materials is forbidden in many countries of European Union;
• in some member countries there are exceptions for PET coming from authorized recycling processes;
• a law accordance among the different countries does not exist, and many of them follow the guide lines of the virgin materials;
The current legislation is based on the principles of risk absence for the consumers, without defining specific guide lines for the producers.
The European Parliament expressed the interest both to evaluate attentively the impact of the 94/62/ EC directive concerning waste of containers and packages, and to strengthen the prevention and the reuse of recycled materials. In fact a directive revision is in progress and according to it "the Committee should, as soon as possible and not beyond June 30th, 2005, present a development report to the Parliament and to the Europe Council about the implementation and the impact of the directive both on the environment and on the whole market".
But what's going on in the meantime? The Environment GM of the European Parliament commissioned to ECOLAS and PIRA a study of whom we list the main tasks:
• Task 1. - evaluation of the implementation of the 94/62/ EC directive starting from the environmental, economic and social point of view.
• Task 2. - prevention identified in terms of reduction of environmental impact of packaging in relation to packed products and their cycle of life.
• Task 3. - Reuse as complete view of the available data about costs and benefits of recycled containers ( both for sale and for transport ), compared with the current data about not recyclable containers. At the end of the study, the committee will publish the final report in net and will invite to subscribe direct comments and evaluations which will then be discussed and analysed during the final workshop which will take place in Brussels.
Safety evaluation of recycled food containers
TNO analysed the functional characteristics of HDPE and PP boxes for vegetables coming from processes of recycling of last technological generation.
Tests of total and specific migration were carried out on pallets, and the results of these tests showed that the mechanical recycling processes do not determine any negative effect on the new products and respect the law limits as regards the values of total migration which are always beneath 10 mg/dm2.
Processing plastic several times: what are the effects?
Recycled plastic, in compliance with the physical properties and as regards the migration process, can be considered the same of virgin materials to industrial purposes.
This, however, concerns a maximum number of cycles equal to three productive processes. If the technologies of the future allowed to increase the number, this conclusion should be re-examined.
Differences between recycling operations and plastic material typologies
Plastic interacts with the organic chemical substances according to their diffusional and absorption properties. This behaviour is a critical parameter which establishes the degree of contamination and the potential risk for the consumer. The diffusion of plastic generally increases according to the sequence:
rigid PVC < polyester < PET < PS < PP/HDPE < LDPE
Material with low diffusional properties like rigid PVC and PET, can be treated in a more general way in comparison with polyolefin, even though also the chemical inertia has to be checked. From the other side the applications of polyolefin can be more critical, they have to be considered one by one and require more selective controls from the beginning.