Petcore Europe, PlasticsEurope, Plastics Recyclers Europe, and VinylPlus have mutually agreed to join forces to form the organisation PolyREC. PolyREC will monitor, verify, and report their plastics recycling and uptake data in Europe.
This will be achieved by using a common data collection system – RecoTrace. PolyREC will aim to ensure traceability, transparency, and trust in recycled materials along the entire plastics value chain.
PolyREC comes at a time where monitoring polymers circularity is paramount, especially in the context of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA). This system will seek to fulfil the CPA objectives, legislative traceability demands, and industry-wide plastic recycling pledges.
PRE’s President, Ton Emans, elaborated, saying: “Setting up mechanisms that evidence progress in driving plastic circularity in a transparent manner is a must if we are to meet the EU targets.
“Today’s announcement by the plastics value chain covering recyclers, raw material producers, and converters is a significant step towards a credible and systemic approach to genuinely improve plastic production, collection, and recycling. This mutual approach to data collection is indispensable to measure the industry’s advancement while using the same yardstick”.
Petcore Europe’s managing director, Christian Crépet, added: “Petcore Europe has been pioneering the monitoring of PET recycling in Europe since the 1990s, its participation into a joint monitoring recycled plastics scheme for the EU is both timely and logical”.
“We are very pleased to join forces with key plastic value chain partners in setting up this unique cross-polymer monitoring system while benefiting from the longstanding and proven Recovinyl system. Capitalising on our solid experience in providing key figures of the European plastic industry, we see this as a key milestone in our journey towards circular plastics,” added Virginia Janssens, PlasticsEurope managing director.
