TOMRA's E-book Examines the Viability of Using 100% Recycled Plastics

TOMRA Sorting Recycling has published an e-book examining the role that recycling can play in providing solutions to the world’s worsening resource crisis. It explores the technical feasibility and progress made toward 100 percent recyclability of plastics and highlights the opportunities of using high-quality recycled plastics for manufacturers of plastic products and packaging.

The e-book points out that the consumers’ concerns about waste bring opportunities for brands to demonstrate corporate social responsibility and build customer loyalty to benefit their business results.

TOMRA’s e-book explains how the significant progress in plastics recycling technologies, even for PET products, makes using 100 percent recycled plastics not only technically possible but also economically worthwhile. The publication, “The Viability of Using 100% Recycled Plastics,” is available to downloadable free of charge.

TOMRA’s e-book begins by busting the misconception that PET packaging and products other than bottles can only be downcycled into inferior-quality products. In fact, PET bottle recycling has progressed immensely. It is possible to manufacture other PET products, PET trays in particular, from 100 percent recycled materials, which makes sense environmentally and commercially.

The e-book highlights the progress being made toward 100 percent recyclability with technologies such as the SHARP EYE and Laser Object Detection (LOD) systems recently introduced by TOMRA.

SHARP EYE uses TOMRA’s FLYING BEAM technology to distinguish the small chemical differences between PET trays and bottles, so they can be separated for equivalent-product recycling. Combined with TOMRA’s AUTOSORT machine, the SHARP EYE breakthrough technology makes it possible to seamlessly separate even single-layer PET trays from PET bottles.

“Recycling is part of the solution to the world’s worsening resource crisis,” said Tom Eng, senior vice president and head of TOMRA Sorting Recycling, in a statement. “TOMRA’s e-book highlights the environmental and economic importance of sorting technologies for the significant role they can play in improving recycling rates. To complement this, product designers and manufacturers are now beginning to think more carefully about their products’ end-of-life recyclability. Consumers now think about, and our natural environment urgently needs, this. It is together that we can really make a difference.”