Organisations Involved
The guidelines have been developed by the PET Thermoforms Working Group under Petcore Europe, alongside Plastic Recyclers Europe. 

How does it work?
PET trays recyclability matrices broken down by size, colours, barriers, additives, labels and other features of the tray.

The guidelines give three options:

Yes = Full compatibility – materials that passed the testing protocols with no negative impact or materials that have not been tested yet but are known to be acceptable in PET recycling.

Conditional = Limited compatibility – materials that passed the testing protocols if certain conditions are met or materials that have not been tested yet but pose a low risk of interfering with PET recycling.

No = Low compatibility – materials that failed the testing protocols or materials that have not been tested but post a high risk of interfering with PET recycling.

The three options can then be checked against a range of packaging characteristics, such as label adhesive, additives, colours and packaging material. In this way, manufacturers can ideally pick the packaging characteristics that fall within the “Yes” lane to design PET trays optimized for the recycling stream.