Project description
Attaining full recyclability of plastic food trays
Used in plastic food trays, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the most recycled plastic packaging material in Europe. But almost 50 % is landfilled or incinerated. The problem is that PET is commonly combined with other chemicals, like ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH), to create multilayer PET/EVOH plastic sheets. The good news is that these offer an efficient barrier to oxygen penetration. The bad news is that the EVOH layer renders plastic food trays unrecyclable. Since PET/EVOH trays cannot be sorted from fully recyclable PET trays (those not containing EVOH), all food trays are discarded rather than recycled. The EU-funded FRA-PET project is developing an additive proprietary chemical formulation to produce a fully recyclable PET barrier package for food preservation, without EVOH. With this new chemical formulation, recycling of these items can be increased to 100 %.
Objective
Each year, over 381 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced worldwide - equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population. Around 13 million tonnes of this plastics end up in the oceans, causing serious threat to the environment and global health, and an economic burden of €7 billion per year globally. This global emergency calls for new solutions to increase plastic recycling rate. About 14% of the global plastic waste is represented by food packaging. PolyEthylene Terephthalate (PET) is the most common plastic resin used in the food packaging industry. To increase food shelf life, PET is commonly combined with other chemicals, such as EVOH, to create multilayer PET/EVOH plastic sheets that offer an efficient barrier to oxygen penetration to the plastic food tray. While representing a need for food quality preservation, the presence of an EVOH layer makes food plastic trays not recyclable. Unfortunately, since PET/EVOH trays cannot be sorted from fully recyclable PET trays (i.e. those not containing EVOH), they cause all the food trays to be discarded rather than recycled – accounting for 1.1 million of tonnes of PET trays either incinerated or landfilled each year only in Europe.
Point Plastic offers FRA-PET, a game-changing additive to produce fully recyclable PET barrier package for food preservation. Thanks to additive proprietary chemical formulation, FRA-PET food trays provide the highest efficiency oxygen barrier and best performance in food quality preservation without requiring EVOH use. FRA-PET enables to increase the current recycling of plastic barrier food trays from 0% to 100%, sustaining the circular economy of plastic. FRA-PET has the potential to become the new gold standard for PET packaging.
The key objectives of the project are to optimize the FRA-PET chemical formulation, validate FRA-PET trays performance through a pilot study with two food manufacturers, and obtain certifications for commercialization in Europe.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering waste management waste treatment processes recycling
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies food technology food packaging
- social sciences economics and business economics sustainable economy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
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H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME - SME instrument
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
03012 ANAGNI
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.