Recycled PET: High-Performance, Food-Safe Packaging

Companies face growing pressure to meet sustainability goals without sacrificing product quality or compliance. Recycled PET provides a strong solution due to its:

international availability
food-grade status
high quality

At Greiner Packaging, we are committed both to business optimization and sustainability. We continuously optimize the material itself and drive the methods used for processing it.

Why r-PET Plastic Matters for Business Success

The term “recycled PET” – or recycled polyethylene terephthalate – refers to a high-quality recycled plastic material. It is made from post-consumer PET packaging, with most r-PET derived from plastic bottles. These are collected, sorted, and processed into new r-PET packaging solutions – with the results meeting strict food safety standards.

This has made recycled PET a favored solution across industries and increasingly essential for modern businesses. This recycled material offers sustainability without compromising product integrity. Because businesses are now less reliant on virgin plastic, they benefit from:

meeting regulatory compliance
strengthened their ESG performance
securing a more resilient supply chain
responding to consumer demand for responsible packaging

Where r-PET Material Is Already Successfully Applied

Its high performance, clarity, food-grade safety, and robust barrier properties make it a favored option for sensitive products. Beyond that, recycled PET is already supporting circular packaging strategies in food production, healthcare, and many more sectors:

Whether for ready meals, dairy containers, or cold-fill drinks – recycled PET offers safe storage, clear product visibility, and an extended shelf-life.

Because recycled PET is compatible with fatty content, it has proven a great choice for medical nutrition and supplement packaging alike.

The transparent properties of recycled PET have made it a favorite among brands of lotions, gels, and personal care items. It allows these companies to combine premium shelf appeal with sustainability.

Custom designs are easily executed with recycled PET. This way, your business receives high-end custom designs and positions itself with eco-responsible goals.

Benefits of Recycled PET for Efficient Businesses

High Product Visibility:

Because of the high natural clarity of r-PET, consumers can already convince themselves of the freshness of the packaged food on the shelf.

International Availability:

r-PET is readily available both in Europe, the US, and internationally. This makes the material a reliable solution for multinational production or distribution.

Food-Grade Approved:

As one of the few mechanically recycled materials approved by EFSA and the FDA, recycled PET is suited for direct food contact.

Excellent Barrier Performance:

Recycled PET is known for its excellent barrier properties. These allow it to protect products from external influences, such as oxygen or light – extending shelf life in the process.

Safe for High-Fat Products:

Recycled PET is also suited for products with a high fat content, such as dairy, sauces, and even medical nutrition.

Further Innovations Around Recycled PET at Greiner Packaging

Greiner Packaging is at the forefront of developing PET and recycled PET further, streamlining their processing and optimizing material usage. This also leads to innovations in other fields of our expertise – all benefiting our business partners.

One such example is the development of high-temperature-stable r-PET. This is often used in our plastic cups for hot-fill or microwaveable formats. The material thus combines food safety with high heat-resistance. Our continuous development also affects our decoration technologies for custom packaging.

The future goal of the entire industry is to establish a tray-to-tray cycle for r-PET that keeps recycled PET in circulation, independently of bottle streams. Here, too, Greiner Packaging is working on numerous projects to bring this vision to life.

Visit our global website to learn more about r-PET HTS

FAQs

R-PET stands for recycled polyethylene terephthalate, which is a type of plastic that is made from recovered post-consumer PET waste. The main difference between r-PET and virgin PET is that r-PET is produced from recycled materials, while virgin PET is made from new, raw materials.

The recycled PET used today for packaging is mainly obtained from bottle streams. Collection streams for PET beverage bottles are already up and running around the world, so PET bottles are available in large quantities for recycling. In addition to their high collection rate, the bottles offer another decisive advantage – they are usually transparent or bluish in color and either undecorated or only decorated with an easily detachable label or sleeve. This has a positive effect on the quality of the recycled material, as recycling processes carried out using largely transparent, unprinted input material yield similarly pure output material.

The use of recycled materials offers several environmental benefits. Most of all, it saves resources and decreases greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of virgin materials. Additionally, PET offers a high oxygen barrier, which is a benefit in terms of shelf life and following food protection.

r-PET can be used to manufacture a wide range of packaging products, including plastic cups, bottles, trays, lids for containers etc.

Today, food-grade r-PET is produced almost exclusively from bottle streams. However, if the material is used to make items such as cups and blister packs, there is currently only a limited opportunity to recycle it again. That must change in the future, with the aim to establish a so-called tray-to-tray recycling stream. Many projects already exist that drive such streams.

Another challenge is that, in comparison to other materials such as PS or PP, conventional (r-) PET shows lower heat resistance. For products that require heat resistance (r-) PET HTS^® will be an interesting option in the future.

On the production side, it requires good experience to smoothly process r-PET as the recycled input material is more inhomogeneous than virgin material based packaging. Regarding the product itself, there can be slight differences, especially in terms of color. While PET products shine with very high transparency, packaging made from r-PET tends to have a somewhat greyish/bluish/greenish appearance.