The 100% recycled pet bottle

It was released in July, apparently only for disclosure on social networks, a commercial of Ambev in which is celebrated an interesting fact: there are nine months of manufacturing and marketing of polyethylene terephthalate bottles or simply the PET bottles – made entirely with recycled packing the Guarana Antarctica.
According to the company's balance sheet, in those nine months about 120 million bottles of 2 liters of Guarana, the equivalent to 20% of the total, were transformed into new soda bottles in four factories located in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco.
The national health surveillance Agency, ANVISA, following a European and North American trend, approved in 2008 legislation that provides the regulation so that a pack of post-consumer PET recycled can have direct contact with food. The legislation specifies the maximum amount of contaminants that may remain in recycled packaging without these are passed to the food. To get that number, extremely low (in the range of parts per billion), only the fusion of PET does not solve.
With the goal of achieving commitments in this regard, research groups around the world have studied several possibilities to achieve a final product that pass the tests-challenges, that have rigorous methodology developed by the American food and Drug Agency (FDA, the acronym in English).
Although surrounded by secrecy, the impression is that the technique filed by Ambev and approved by ANVISA concerns a physical procedure, in which a cleaning much more efficient that the conventional is employed. In the recycling of plastics, prior to the merger, regardless of the expected use for recycled, is practically essential that the waste is crushed and washed, given the presence of impurities (and possibly contaminants associated with) which are impregnated in the most varied types of packaging, including PET bottles.
Ambev propaganda says that any PET bottle can turn a bottle of guaraná, but subtly just puts green packaging (such as Guarana) and colorless as well as does not put packages of vegetable oils.
Probably packs of other colors make obtaining green that customers of guaraná are accustomed and the presence of oil in the washing tank certainly brings an extra difficulty, by the necessity of removing the associated fat. It is known that the recycling of any material, and in particular of a PET bottle for food contact, is so much easier and cheaper, as well as of best quality, fewer impurities the residue of interest you have. Thus, the selective collection is an agent facilitator of this process.
The manufacture of 100% recycled PET bottles for direct food contact can approach the plastic of aluminium cans, which present in Brazil incredibly recycling rates close to 100%. For the PET, recycling is little more than 58%, but it is estimated that with the opening of the original market, from soda bottles, that number can go up a lot. This would contribute to the enhancement of the residue or at least a much easier sale. Ultimately, improves the lives of collector of recyclable material.
Text by Sandro Donnini Mancini – UNESP professor of Sorocaba for undergraduate courses in Environmental Engineering, master's and doctoral degrees in Science and materials technology and a master's degree in Civil and environmental engineering.