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Recycling body blasts PET carbon footprint report

European Plastics Recyclers (EuPR) has hit back at an "unwise" Swiss report that suggested landfilling could be preferable to recycling PET bottles.

SRI Consulting's 'PET's Carbon Footprint: To Recycle or Not to Recycle' analysed the carbon footprint of PET bottles from the production of raw material to disposal and secondary packaging from cradle to grave.

It found that landfilling plastic bottles could have a lower carbon footprint than recycling in countries with recycling yields of lower than 50%.

But Casper van den Dungen, chairman of EuPR's PET working group, said that applying the SRI Consulting results would mean "losing valuable material in landfills".

"The used model is intrinsically wrong as in reality landfill should be avoided as a starting principle," he said.

"These kind of studies are hazardous because they are bringing a wrong message to the  population that their efforts to recycle are useless," said Van den Dungen.

"It goes against all the efforts achieved during the past decades in order to reduce litter."

Higher yield from deposit schemes
SRIC found that programmes such as deposits and mandated segregated collections had a higher yield than kerbside collections in terms of generating material to replace virgin PET in new products.

SRIC said the aim should be to boost the yield to more than 50% of material being collected being turned into new products.

"For countries without a recycling infrastructure and sufficient space, the best choice may well be to landfill bottles."