Extrusion International 4-2025-USA

54 Extrusion International 4/2025 RECYCLING Positive “Scientific Opinion” for PET Bottle-to-Bottle Recycling Process The European Food Safety Authority EFSA confirms the compliance of the decontamination performance of the recoSTAR PET art recycling process in a positive “Scientific Opinion” based on the new regulation in force since 2022. S tarlinger and its customers al- ready received a total of 120 “Pos- itive Opinions” under the previous Regulation EU 282/2008 – more than any other manufacturer of PET recy- cling technologies. The positive as- sessment of the PET bottle-to-bottle recycling process on the “recoSTAR PET art” system is the first positive Scientific Opinion under Regulation EU 2022/1616 for Starlinger. Under the new regulation, modi - fied and stricter assessment criteria are applied: The permissible limits after decontamination for substan- ces such as toluene, chlorobenzene and methyl salicylate, for example, have been reduced by up to 50 %. The corresponding challenge test showed that the recoSTAR PET art process clearly exceeded the re- quired cleaning efficiencies. As soon as the European Commis- sion authorizes the decontamina- tion process based on the positive Scientific Opinion (by allocating the officially registered Recy - cling Process Authorization Number RAN to the respective process), the process developer can license it directly to PET recyclers. This makes the authorisation pro- cedure a lot easier and faster com- pared to before because once the process has been approved, no fur - ther tests are required. Higher throughput, lower energy consumption Starlinger presented the reco- STAR PET art PET bottle-to-bottle recycling system for the first time in 2022 at the “K” plastics trade fair in Düsseldorf as the successor to the well-known recoSTAR PET iV+ systems. The new machine model reduces energy consumption per kg by around 25 % while increasing throughput by 15 % and more. The machine range covers throughputs from 1,000 kg/h to 3,200 kg/h. Starlinger customers worldwide supply around 2.5 million tons of food-grade PET regranulate for beverage bottle production per year. Almost 300,000 tons of this are already produced on 18 recoSTAR PET art systems which are in opera- tion in Europe, America, Africa, In - dia and Southeast Asia. Starlinger & Co Gesellschaft m.b.H. Sonnenuhrgasse 4, 1060 Vienna, Austria www.starlinger.com/en/ recycling-technology https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2025.9491 EFSA’s positive Scientific Opinion confirms the excellent decontamination performance of the PET bottle-to-bottle- recycling process on Starlinger’s recoSTAR PET art recycling system (Pictures © Starlinger) The rPET produced with Starlinger‘s recoSTAR PET art technology can be used up to 100 % in the production of food-contact packaging