On January 29, 2014 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a scientific opinion considering the post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling process “Aliplast Buhler B” safe for food contact materials (FCMs). The process requires the hot caustic washing and drying of PET flakes derived from collected PET bottles and containers. The flakes are then decontaminated under high temperature and gas flow in a countercurrent reactor. The recycling stream may not contain more than 5% PET from non-food consumer applications, the scientific opinion states. Based on experiments with surrogate contaminants, EFSA estimates that the process cleans PET to such extend as to assure migration levels remain below 0.1 µg/kg.
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EFSA (January 29, 2014). “Scientific Opinion on the safety assessment of the process “Aliplast Buhler B” used to recycle post-consumer PET into food contact materials.” EFSA Journal 12(2); 3551.
