The European Commission has published its new regulation on food grade plastic recycling.
Set to come into force in June 2022, the new rules set out how plastics of food grade quality will need to be collected and the regulations around the technologies and processes used.
It also set outs the registration and record-keeping requirements for food grade plastic recycling.
On collection, the new rules will mean that only plastics from municipal waste, food retail or food businesses will be permitted.
These plastics must also be collected separately, although collection with other core materials is permitted as long as the other material is not hazardous and the collection and sorting is carried out to minimise contamination. Waste management companies will also need to set up quality assurance systems to verify this.
Plastics recyclers will need to identify single batches of recycled plastics with a unique number and the name of the manufacturing stage from which they originate.
They will also be subject to rules on the labelling of the containers that are delivered to converters, that will need to contain the registry number of the facility and the batch number of the load. It must also contain the percentage by weight of the plastic that originates from recycling, as well as the maximum percentage that the articles that will contain this material will have if this is less than 100%.
