plastics recyclers europe pre, a trade association for the european plastics industry, is warning that increasing use of coloured pet packaging could lead to &lsquoa collapse in the pet and hdpe recycling industry&rsquo.an assortment of plastic bottles, including hdpe and pet packagingaccording to the group, producers of milk packaging, as well as those manufacturing home and personal care packaging, are increasingly planning to switch from using highdensity polyethylene hdpe in their products to polyethylene terephthalate pet, due to &lsquocost, marketing and sustainability reasons&rsquo.however, pre warns that as the majority of these products are &lsquotypically packaged in colourful containers due to marketing reasons&rsquo, this shift could lead to more than 300,000 additional tonnes of coloured pet, including black and white colours, entering the market. pre has argued that as the coloured rpet fraction would likely have to be tinted to a uniform colour such as grey or black, and no market of any size exists for such an output, the coloured pet would in effect be a &lsquowaste&rsquo stream, and yield from recycling plants will &lsquodrastically decrease&rsquo.other concerns centre aroundthe extra sorting capacity needed to be installed at pet recycling facilities to sort the pet materials into different coloursthe extra work needed to colour the sorted fraction which has a &lsquogreyish&rsquo tint with dark grey or black dyes and finding a relevant end market for this material an increase of titanium dioxide used in a pigment that makes plastic bottles appear brighter and opaque, which could create a &lsquohaze&rsquo effect on clear packaging and present &lsquoserious issues for food contact and fibre applications&rsquo.the association commented &lsquothese &ldquocolourful&rdquo future trends will weaken the image of pet as a recycled product. additionally, it will create great difficulties for the pet recycling industry, which already has other market barriers such as transaction costs and &ldquoinformation failures&rdquo to overcome. furthermore, the existing hdpe recycling industry, which already has a market for coloured hdpe applications e.g. the pipe industry will suffer if coloured pet continues to grow.&lsquothe actors willing to pursue this dangerous path should be ready to bear the increase in extended producer responsibility costs and accept a collapse in the pet & hdpe recycling industry.&rsquopre suggests that to mitigate the &lsquocollapse&rsquo of the industry, packaging producers could instead use &lsquofull body&rsquo sleeves which &lsquomust be detectable by nir sorting systems and cannot interact negatively in the recycling process&rsquo to colour their packaging &ndash rather than switch to coloured pet.it concluded &lsquopre calls on the pet and hdpe value chains to join efforts to avoid breaking the circular functioning of these recycling streams.&rsquoplastics industry facing increasing challengesthe recycled plastics industry has already faced &lsquounprecedented challenges&rsquo this year, as a result of falling oil prices.earlier this year, the price of oil dropped to under us60 £40 a barrel for the first time in five years, thus making the price of virgin plastic fall and leading some businesses to switch back from recycled polymers to virgin plastic. as a result of this, and &lsquooperational challenges and unfavourable market conditions&rsquo, two plastic reprocessors, eco plastics now known as ecoplastics recycling and closed loop recycling now known as euro closed loop recycling ltd, sought acquisition.find out more about plastics recyclers europe.