Europe – PET bottle recycling continues its upward trend

Petcore publishes PET collection figures for 2004



Petcore has announced that European post-consumer PET collection rates reached 665,000 tonnes in 2004, representing an 8.5% increase over the previous year.



Germany, France and Italy were once again delivering the largest volumes with a combined share of 60%. Significant growth was recorded in Ireland, Poland, and Spain. "We are observing a shift in growth towards countries with a relatively young collection infrastructure," said Frank Koelewijn, Petcore‘‘s Director General. "Collection of post consumer PET bottles will continue to increase in European countries with mature collection systems, but much of that growth will ride on the back of the increase in PET consumption. Depressed PET consumption due to adverse weather in the summer of 2004 was immediately reflected in the recycling volume. Petcore still expects that by 2010, more than one million tons of European PET will be collected and recycled".



The rapid increase in the export of empty PET bottles to the Far East, reaching 22% in 2003, has finally come to a halt. In 2004, Europe exported 125,000 tons of post consumer PET to South-East Asia, which is 18.8% of all collected PET. Most of those bottles came from German retailers. "We hope that when Germany introduces a more transparent nationwide collection system in May 2006, shop owners will become more discerning about the final destination of the bottles that are brought back by their consumers", said Mr. Koelewijn.



The European markets for recycled PET are gradually moving towards high quality applications. More than 90% of polyester strapping is nowadays made of recycled PET, using 11% of the collected bottles. Packaging material like thermoformed polyester and PET containers accounted for 23.2% of the market, compared to 18.6% in 2003. Polyester fibre outlets dropped from 70% in 2003, to 65% in 2004