IN Brief:
- The bottle combines 100% recycled PET with a stretch sleeve containing 50% post-consumer recycled material.
- Air separation and sink-float processing recover PET and polyethylene into separate fractions.
- The partners are still developing a cap-to-cap recycling route.
OPACKGROUP and plastics recycler Morssinkhof-Rymoplast have developed a bottle-and-sleeve combination designed to keep polyethylene terephthalate and polyethylene packaging materials in separate recycling streams. The concept pairs a bottle manufactured from 100% recycled PET with a stretch sleeve containing 50% post-consumer recycled material, using mechanical separation rather than adhesives to recover the different polymers after collection.
Circu-sleeve uses the sleeve's elasticity to hold printed decoration around the bottle without an adhesive bond. That design addresses a practical conflict in beverage packs: printed information must remain secure during filling, transport and sale, but the decoration must also be removable during recycling. Adhesives that accompany PET into washing can complicate the production of a clean recycled stream. The new sleeve is intended to stay attached while the pack is in use and to separate after it is shredded for reprocessing.
The stretch sleeve is applied without glue. It does not require the adhesive bond used for some conventional labelling methods, so the recycling process is designed around the different physical properties of the sleeve and bottle materials rather than a chemical or mechanical adhesive-removal step. The sleeve is made from low-density polyethylene, while the container is PET. Both materials have established recycling uses, provided the resulting fractions can be recovered with suitable purity.
After collection, the bottle packaging enters Morssinkhof-Rymoplast's recycling process and is reduced to flakes. Air separation, also called wind shifting, uses differences in how the lighter sleeve material and other particles behave in an air stream. That step removes part of the flexible sleeve fraction before a sink-float separation stage exploits the different densities of the polymers. PET sinks in the separation medium, while the lower-density polyethylene sleeve and cap fractions float.
The PET stream can then undergo further cleaning before being prepared for subsequent applications. Avoiding glue also reduces the possibility of adhesive residues accompanying the PET into the wash process. OPACKGROUP says the arrangement is designed to provide high-quality recycled PET while retaining the sleeve polymer for recycling into new LDPE raw material. The caps are processed separately for new uses, and the companies are still developing a cap-to-cap recycling route.
The system combines recycled input material with a defined route for separating components after use. A 100% recycled-PET bottle establishes the bottle's material origin, while the sleeve contains 50% post-consumer recycled content. Once the packaging has been collected and processed into flakes, air classification and density separation recover distinct PET and LDPE fractions for further treatment. Those recycled-content percentages describe the materials used to make the package, rather than the proportion of packs later returned for recycling.
OPACKGROUP manufactures flexible packaging and films through businesses specialising in extrusion, lamination, printing and conversion. Those capabilities are relevant because the stretch sleeve must combine controlled dimensions, print performance and sufficient elasticity to remain securely fitted without a permanent adhesive attachment. The bottle also needs to retain its integrity through filling, distribution and consumer handling. The companies have focused their collaboration on a format that is compatible with established bottle recovery operations rather than proposing a wholly new polymer system.
Morssinkhof-Rymoplast's recycling operation provides the testing context for that separation sequence. Wind shifting first targets lightweight film, leaving the remaining material to be separated by density: PET sinks and polyethylene floats. The staged approach reduces the load placed on any single separation step, although the fractions obtained depend on the incoming waste stream and the equipment configuration. Material collected through other sorting systems would still need to meet the requirements of the corresponding recycling plant.
The partners intend to recycle the recovered sleeve fraction into new LDPE raw material and process the cap material for other applications. A cap-to-cap route is still being developed. Recycling a polymer into a new product does not necessarily recover it as the same packaging component: the scheme has defined PET and sleeve recovery routes, with further development under way for caps. Actual collection and recovery rates will depend on the waste infrastructure that handles bottles placed on the market.
The next stage is adoption by beverage bottlers and the recycling systems that handle their packaging. Sleeve print quality, fit and application speed must work with industrial decoration and filling lines, while the materials must remain separable in the collection streams serving each market. The collaboration has established a specific bottle-and-label construction and described how the polymers can be separated at Morssinkhof-Rymoplast. Wider deployment will test whether that construction performs consistently across production, distribution and recovery operations.
