PET clamshell material packaging is a ‘hard to recycle’ plastic and, unless it is recycled, most now ends up in landfill. The project will be installing a process to recover 5,000 metric tonnes per year of PET clamshell material. In recovering 5,000 metric tonnes per year of PET clamshell material per year, the global net emission reduction is estimated to be around 4,423 tonnes of CO2e by 2030 and 23,152 tonnes CO2e by 2050. The market level emission reduction in Alberta is estimated to be around 7,238 tonnes of CO2e by 2030 and 112,439 tonnes CO2e by 2050. (Source: ERA Greenhouse Gas Quantification Assessment Report by Brightspot Climate Inc.) There is currently no known process that is commercially viable in the recycling industry to process PET clamshell material back into rPET that can be used in food grade applications at a high percentage insertion rate. The highest current insertion rate is approximately only 20%. Merlin’s goal is to achieve circular PET clamshell packaging on a commercial scale at a 100% insertion rate by customers which will allow the material to be diverted from landfill.
Merlin has customers who wish to buy this recycled PET clamshell material and use it at a 100% insertion rate provided the process meet their required specs. The difficulty with PET clamshell material that makes it hard to recycle is due to: (1) the labels are glued and hard to remove, and (2) the clamshell material is inherently brittle in nature and when it is ground up, it tends to turn into fines (the problem with fines is that they are too small and also end up becoming unrecoverable). The challenge then is how to fully clean this material and turn it into pellet material so that it can be made circular and returned into PET clamshell packaging again.