Recyclates: plastic for a second round

A recyclate is a plastic reprocessed from collected waste material instead of being produced anew from crude oil. A distinction is made between post-consumer recyclate (PCR, from end-user waste) and post-industrial recyclate (PIR, from production scrap). The achievable quality depends on sorting purity and reprocessing.

In the webshop you will find bottles in rPET, jars with recyclate content, Euro boxes in rPP, baskets and buckets in recycled polypropylene, pallets in PE-HD regranulate as well as bags and sacks in rPE. The recyclate share possible for a specific item is stated per product – and we check beforehand whether the standard and application permit its use.

Not across the board. Direct food contact is governed by the requirements of EU 10/2011; recycled plastics need a suitable, approved process chain for this. We therefore use recyclates in a targeted way in applications without direct food contact and always clarify the use per product and batch.

Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 prescribes minimum shares of post-consumer recyclate that take effect on 1 January 2030 at the earliest: 30 per cent for contact-sensitive PET packaging, 10 per cent for contact-sensitive packaging in other polymers, 30 per cent for single-use plastic beverage bottles and 35 per cent for other plastic packaging. From 2040 the quotas rise to 50, 25, 65 and 65 per cent. Swiss manufacturers are affected as soon as they place packaging on the market in the EU.

With suitable sorting purity and reprocessing, recyclates reach a well-usable property level for many technical applications. Colour, tolerance and mechanical consistency can scatter more widely than virgin material – so we choose the material based on requirements rather than a blanket quality promise.

Recyclates save energy and CO₂ because the energy-intensive primary production from crude oil is avoided. The concrete benefit depends on material, reprocessing and balance boundary, and can only be quantified seriously with a product-specific carbon footprint. We deliberately make no blanket percentage promises – we substantiate values per product.

Yes – in injection moulding and product development we check which recyclate type and which share your part can carry. Function, required tolerances, appearance and the applicable standards are decisive. Where the part does not allow a conversion, we say so – and show instead what recycling-friendly design can contribute.