The "Plastic Can"

Napthalate-based polyesters, or "PEN" for short, are a group of wonder materials from which beverage containers may be made which have aesthetic and performance characteristics similar to glass, but which offer the durability and convenience of cans. We could call these containers "plastic cans."

The potential benefits from PEN are such that it would already have supplanted or augmented many PET plastic applications but for one catch: PEN is challenging to recycle (though not insurmountably so).

Consequently, the U.S. FDA has delayed approval of certain uses for PEN/PET copolymers and blends out of concern for their potentially detrimental effect on the finances of recycling programs which currently rely on aluminum can revenues to offset the cost of collecting and processing PET bottles. Pending FDA approval, beverage producers have mothballed their PEN/PET container production in North America. However, PEN container distribution proceeds apace in other countries, most notably Japan.

If you think this approval will be held up forever, consider that historically every major packaging innovation has (eventually) overcome regulatory hurdles. The funds available to the soft drink and petrochemical industries for lobbying and marketing are astonishing. The market won't stand still just because curbside recycling programs were established at a time when beverages were sold in pricey cans and clunky glass bottles.

The potential applications for PEN homopolymers (for refillable soft drink, wine, spirits and milk containers, widemouth food jars, pharmaceutical and cosmetic bottles, etc.) and PEN/PET copolymers or blends (for recyclable beverage and other containers) are almost limitless. PEN beer bottles are already in use in the United Kingdom.

PET has already altered recycling programs forever, and PEN will do the same. In a 1996 press release, Professor Marvin Tung, a director of a partnership between the University of Guelph and the Guelph Food Technology Centre which tested PEN/PET blends, stated that PEN/PET copolymers will be a familiar sight in the Canadian marketplace "over the next two to five years" and that costs will be kept down by "piggybacking of the plastic on to the large and successful PET recycling program."

With these developments, anyone operated a recycling program or MRF today with the assumption that the "plastic can" will never arrive would appear to be, at best, naive.

(This is a portion of an editorial originally published in Solid Waste and Recycling magazine and written by Guy Crittenden, Editor-in-Chief. Reprinted by permission.)

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