300 billion market!

PET bottle flakes after cleaning and crushing

Before spinning the recycled PET chips, it needs to be dried and dehydrated, heated and melted, and finally passed through layers of fully automatic spinning equipment before they can be made into recycled fibers that can be spun for clothing and shoes
.

Automatic spinning equipment for drawing and filament

Last year, Nike noted in its Impact Report that 76 percent of Nike's footwear and apparel already uses recycled materials
.
Since 2010, Nike has diverted more than 7.
5 billion plastic bottles recovered from landfills and other places
.

Shoes made from recycled PET flakes

International brands such as Adidas and Decathlon also plan to replace virgin fibers with recycled fibers
.
Among them, Asdas announced that it will fully adopt recycled fibers by 2024
.

According to the estimates of the Recycled PET Branch of China Synthetic Resin Supply and Marketing Association, the current high-end recycled PET market is increasing at a rate of 100%, and there will be a market of 50 billion US dollars (about 328.
815 billion yuan) in the world in the future
.
According to the demand signals released by downstream application brands, the regenerated fiber industry will be prosperous in the next ten years
.

From low-end to high-end: unsolved industrial problems

Previously discarded plastic bottles were used as low-end products, while low-end recycled plastic products contained many impurities, and were mainly used as fillers for recycled water pipes, plastic buckets and sofas
.

In the past three years, the implementation of the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the Reform of the Solid Waste Import Management System by Prohibiting the Entry of Foreign Waste" (hereinafter referred to as the "Waste Ban") has superimposed the dual impact of environmental protection and rectification, and the domestic recycled plastics industry has undergone tremendous changes
.

According to customs data, domestic waste plastic imports in 2017 were 705 tons, and in 2018, the import volume plummeted to 7.
6 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 98.
92%
.

Low-end recycled plastic enterprises that are "scattered, chaotic and poor" have also become the focus of current environmental protection rectification
.
Click for details → hit it! In Shandong, Jiangsu, and Shaanxi, the scattered pollution has been rectified, and forklifts in plastic factories have been blocked!

The reduction in the supply of recycled plastic raw materials has prompted prices to rise, but the overall market demand for recycled plastics is relatively stable, which has led to the continuous compression of manufacturers' profits
.

At present, the main factors restricting companies from entering the high-end recycled PET industry include high production costs and unstable product quality
.
There are three main reasons for the high price of high-end recycled PET chips: First, the volume of recycled plastic bottles is large, and the overall transportation cost is high
.
Second, some recycled plastic bottles need to be sorted manually to remove the glue stuck on the back of the bottle label, and the labor cost is high
.
The third is that the production capacity of high-end recycled PET is still small, and the scale effect cannot be formed
.

The price of high-end recycled PET chips is too high, which may cause many end companies to not accept it
.
This is the main reason why many small and medium-sized enterprises have low participation in high-end recycled plastics
.

From recycling to packaging: the changing plastics market

At present, China's plastic bottle recycling system is relatively extensive
.
In Japan, South Korea and other countries, residents will wash and dry the plastic bottles before recycling them, and separate the caps, bottle bodies and labels of the plastic bottles
.

This refined recycling method can not only save the sorting work of personnel after recycling plastic bottles, but also reduce the stains and impurities of plastic bottles, and improve the recycling quality of plastic bottles from the source
.

There is also a lot of room for improvement in the packaging design of plastic bottles before consumption
.
For example, the well-known Sprite bottle has a green body, and this colored plastic bottle will make it more difficult to make transparent PET chips after recycling
.

The labels on some plastic bottles are made of non-washable adhesives, which need to be manually scraped off by manpower.
The residual adhesives will also affect the recycling quality of the plastic bottles
.

Liu Congcong, deputy secretary general of the Plastic Recycling Branch of China Synthetic Resin Association, believes that to fundamentally solve the problem of plastic bottle recycling, it is necessary to build a pre-consumption easy recycling system for plastic products
.
That is, all plastic products have a unified recyclability standard, thereby reducing recycling links and reducing recycling costs
.

Some plastic packaging companies have begun to make changes
.

ChinaReplas2020 "Golden Apple Award" award ceremony

At this year's China Plastics Recycling and Recycling Conference, products such as Orphan Raflatac's PET bottle washable adhesive labels and Avery Dennison's Clean Flake PET won the "Golden Apple Award" in recognition of the plastics of these companies.
Recyclability design concept
.
Click for details→Conference event: Golden Apple Award for Recyclable Design, presented in shock

Both award-winning labels are formulated with a washable adhesive that allows the label and bottle to separate cleanly during the recycling process
.