SUSTAINABILITY AND UPCYCLING
A new concept in recycling
WE ALREADY GIVE PACKAGING A SECOND LIFE. BUT, WHAT IF WE COULD MAKE ALL OF IT LAST A LIFETIME?
Our ecosystem of companies, driven by Formaspack, has come together to drive upcycling in the plastics sector in Europe.
By expanding our activity, creating new companies and forging strategic alliances with other leaders in the PET recycling sector, we have developed an ecosystem to bolster this complete upcycling process in Europe’s plastic industry.
Thanks to this circular business model, we encompass all the activities of the PET value chain and can offer our customers and suppliers a value proposition based on quality, operational agility and competitiveness.
Recycling ≠ Upcycling
Every time plastic is recycled it loses some properties. This means that a given unit of plastic can be used to create products, but they will be of increasingly lower quality. Ultimately, there comes a point at which their viscosity prevents them from being recycled.
This is where upcycling comes in
Upcycling is the use of waste to manufacture new materials of higher quality and greater environmental and economic value.
Upcycling is a Circular Economy practice.
Its biggest difference with recycling is that the end result is of higher quality and greater environmental value, extending the life of the waste and reducing the consumption of virgin raw materials.
Thus, when we recycle, we extend the life of plastic, but when we upcycle we manage for the same plastic to last a lifetime.
We recover PET waste, increasing packaging’s value by giving it infinite lives.
UPCYCLING
RECYCLING
DOWNCYCLING
PET recovery and exploitation process
Our way to change the industry. And the planet.
Because recycling isn’t enough.
Discover our innovative project, which allows us to improve the properties of PET waste, enabling us to manufacture new packaging again.
It all starts in the yellow bin…
The waste collected in yellow bins is sent to different sorting plants, where an initial separation of the PET is carried out in large flows. The PET packaging is then pressed into bales to optimize logistics, and then shipped to recyclers.
Recyclers are responsible for washing and processing PET waste, removing any non-PET residue that may remain (such as caps, film or labels), to retain raw material that is as pure as possible. At the end of this process, we obtain flakes, small pieces of crushed PET, which will constitute the raw material for new packaging. In our ecosystem of companies ClearPet and Recopolymers are dedicated to this activity.
As part of our commitment to circularity, we need to ensure the constant provisioning of raw material. This is where Fych, a team of scientists who study how to optimize the recycling of materials and recycle everything that is not currently recycled, comes in.
PET flakes are melted to become new packaging once again. However, during this process the raw material loses the technical properties necessary to be converted into the same product again. Thus, to avoid problems the industry always reuses waste in applications of less and less value.
We believe that this process is not enough. Our goal is to recover PET to obtain new packaging featuring the same quality and properties it originally had.
Our group company, OMT, has the necessary technology to filter, decontaminate and repair PET flakes, turning them into top-quality recovered raw material pellets. OMT pellets can be used in direct contact with food and beverages, allowing for the manufacture of new packaging featuring 100% recycled PET.
Once we have our pellets ready, at OMT we send part to the main bottle manufacturers in Europe so that they can use our recycled raw material, in this way getting out in front of new legislation, both national and European; it should be borne in mind that, as of 2025, manufacturers will be legally required to incorporate at least 25% recycled raw material into their bottles.
Another part will go to Formaspack for the manufacture of sheets that will later be converted into trays. Packaging intended to contain food, protect it, and extend its shelf life.
At home, after having used bottles, packaging and trays, we must deposit them again in the yellow bin.
This way, we can start again. This is the only process in the packaging industry in Europe capable of recovering rPET and making it recyclable countless times.
This is upcycling.
