Determination of Percentage (%) of Recycled Content

Introduction to BS Flex 6228

The government has introduced a Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT) designed to increase the use of recycled material in the production of plastic packaging. A tax of £200 per tonne is levied on packaging that does not have at least 30% recycled plastic content. In order to police the PPT companies will be required through supply chain auditing to provide evidence that packaging produced does contain ≥ 30% recycle content.

Impact has been working with BSI to develop a Flex Standard 6228 to determine whether a PET product has >30% recyclate in it. The Flex Standard does not replace supply chain auditing, rather it offers a screening method to test whether the properties of a sample are consistent with its claimed level of recyclate. It also does not provide methods to determine the quality of the packaging, and/or its suitability for a specific purpose, such as containing food or drink.

Impact are currently working with polyethylene and polypropylene packaging to extend the scope to a wider range of packaging.

Plastic packaging – Assessment of recycled content within polyethylene terephthalate (PET) virgin material and recyclate blended packaging materials produced from mechanical recycling methods – Specification and test methods.

The BSI Flex covers rigid forms of PET packaging with:

recyclate (i.e. polymers that have been used commercially and have been returned for re-use through waste collection), it does not cover regrind (i.e. material used during processing and recycled internally within a production facility for blending with virgin polymers).
recyclate produced through mechanical recycling methods from plastic waste streams not from chemical recycling methods.
translucent or transparent properties but not coloured or opaque products.

It also covers recycled content within PET pellets created from waste streams for use as a raw material from which plastic packaging will be created.

The Flex model has been developed using 75 different rPET/PET products from 14 separate manufacturers.

The model for predicting the presence and levels of recycled rPET present in PET packaging products is empirically derived from a combination of the following tests undertaken on each of the 75 samples.

Thermal (DSC/TGA) to determine the crystallization temperature on cooling
Colourimetry to measurement of tristimulus property L*
UV-visible spectrometry to measure the transmission and absorbance

The standard enables (i) the determine of the probability that rPET% content in the product is greater than 30%, and (ii) to calculate the recycled content when the virgin and recycled feedstocks are available.