Recycling of PET containers continues to increase across Europe, according to a recent report.
The trade group Petcore Europe estimates 57 percent of PET containers were recycled in 2014. That’s 1.3 percentage points above 2013’s Europe-wide recovery rate. It’s also nearly double the U.S. recovery rate for PET containers in 2013, which was just above 31 percent.
All told, 66 billion containers were recovered by European countries, the study shows. That sum equals roughly 2 million short tons of PET material, taking up 79 percent of the capacity available to process rPET.
The study also notes demand for PET across Europe grew by nearly 5 percent from 2013 to 2014.
While heralding PET recovery efforts in Europe as “a success story over the last 25 years,” Petcore called on both the industry and consumers to step up efforts to increase recovery.
“On one hand, our industry has to work together to align the collection processes to deliver increased recycling objectives,” said Petcore’s executive director, Patrick Peuche. “On the other hand, consumers have to be more engaged.”
