According to the study, most of the returned high-quality PET material is used for packaging for cleaning supplies, cosmetics or textiles. This means that there is a so-called downcycling of recyclable plastic – i.e. a devaluation of the recycling material, since it may not be reused for the production of beverage bottles due to the strict legal requirements.
According to the report, a bottle-to-bottle system could make an important contribution to climate protection, in which only new beverage bottles are made from old PET bottles. According to the study, there is enough material in Germany to produce 90 percent of all new disposable bottles from recycled PET (rPET). This could save on the production of new plastic and reduce greenhouse gases.
“Beverage manufacturers should be able to be the first to access the recycled PET material in order to be able to make beverage bottles out of it again,” said Tilmann Rothammer, member of the management board of Coca-Cola Germany, the Funke newspapers. “The ‘bottle-to-bottle’ principle is essential for us in order to break the current downcycling spiral through recycling cycles that are as closed as possible.”
