PET — polyethylene terephthalate — has carried the European plastic-packaging recycling story for two decades. Clear PET water bottles are collected at ~75% across the EU, sorted with high purity, and re-enter food-grade applications through EFSA-approved processes. Under PPWR, well-designed PET routinely earns grade A. Badly designed PET earns grade D, and the manufacturer rarely notices until the EPR fees land.
Three properties make PET unique among consumer-packaging plastics:
The combination earns clear PET bottles a default RecyClass grade A under Annex II — but only the bottle, not the package. The grade you actually achieve is determined by everything else on the item.
Annex II’s worst-of methodology punishes contamination disproportionately. The following five design choices are the most common reason an “all-PET” package grades as B, C or D:
A PVC shrink-sleeve over a PET bottle contaminates the PET recycling stream at the wash stage (the PVC melts at lower temperatures and produces hydrochloric acid byproducts). Result: a 95% PET / 5% PVC item grades as a PVC item under RecyClass — typically grade D.
Mitigations: switch to LDPE or OPP sleeves with perforations for consumer removal; use direct-print on the bottle; reduce sleeve coverage to < 50% with full-perforation.
Carbon-black ink absorbs near-infrared light, making the PET bottle invisible to the NIR sortation line. The bottle ends up in the residue stream instead of the PET stream. A high-coverage carbon-black print can drop a grade-A bottle to grade C.
Mitigations: substitute carbon-black with NIR-detectable alternatives (Sun Chemical SunPURE, Datacolor); limit black coverage to < 5% of bottle surface; use direct labelling rather than full-body sleeves.
Metallic foils and metallised pigments interfere with the electrostatic separation downstream of sortation. They also bleed into the rPET pellet, giving it a grey cast that disqualifies it from food-grade applications.
PET-G (glycol-modified PET) and amorphous PET (APET) look like PET but behave differently in the wash and pelletising stages. They contaminate the rPET feedstock and are flagged as separate streams by RecyClass.
Heavily coloured PET (opaque white, deep blue, green) downgrades the recyclate value because the rPET cannot be used in clear food-contact applications. Light-blue tinted PET is generally acceptable; bold colours are not.
→ Carbonorm flags each grade-degrading attribute on your PET SKUs (sleeve material, ink coverage, copolymer type) and tells you the cheapest substitution to climb back to grade A.
PET has its own row in the Article 7 threshold table, and it is the most aggressive food-contact threshold in the regulation:
| Category | 1 Jan 2030 | 1 Jan 2040 |
|---|---|---|
| Contact-sensitive PET packaging | 30% | 50% |
| Single-use plastic beverage bottles | 30% | 65% |
The 65% threshold for single-use beverage bottles by 2040 is the steepest in the regulation. Achievable but tight — the EU rPET supply will need to expand by ~3× over the same period, and bottle-to-bottle food-grade approval pathways must clear faster than the historical EFSA cycle. Article 7 deep-dive →
rPET supply is the binding constraint on PET-heavy portfolios in the 2025–2030 window. Three dynamics:
| Plastic | Typical Article 6 grade | Article 7 PCR threshold (2030) | Recyclate supply outlook |
|---|---|---|---|
| PET (clear) | A — gold standard | 30% (contact-sensitive) | Tight, premium-priced |
| HDPE (natural) | A — well-established | 10% (contact-sensitive) | Adequate |
| HDPE (coloured) | B — colour penalty | 10% | Adequate |
| PP | B — emerging at-scale recyclate | 10% | Constrained — chemical recycling pathway |
| LDPE film | C — bag-stream constraints | 10% | Constrained, mainly post-industrial |
| PS / EPS | D — limited mechanical recycling | N/A (not contact-sensitive in most uses) | Poor |
| PVC | D / E — contamination of other streams | Not applicable | Phase-out trajectory |