Recycled PET – Know What’s in Your Products

All about recycled content

Recycled content is material that has been recovered (reclaimed) from previously used goods and reprocessed. This reprocessed material is then made into a new final product or component for incorporation into a finished product.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), commonly used in food, and beverage containers as well as in fibers in the textiles industry, is one of the most recycled polymeric materials globally.¹ Today, only ~15% of global PET textile market is represented by recycled inputs.

With a rising demand for recycled materials, there is evidence that virgin polyester is being sold with a claim of recycled PET (rPET). It is estimated that more than 50% of what is marked and sold as rPET is made from virgin polyester.²

UL Solutions has found that auditing the Chain of Custody (CoC) to track the recycled content in PET along a supply chain is more reliable than other types of testing to validate the recycled content of a product.

Learning objectives:

• What rPET and recycled content in products means.
• How to identify validated rPET and recycled materials in products.
• How to choose the correct methodology to validate rPET.