Recycling plastic bottles may be good for the planet but less so for our health, study finds

IS the recycled plastic that makes up our water and soda bottles an effective long-term solution to waste reduction? A study from Brunel University London reports that drinks packaged in recycled PET bottles can contain more chemicals than those bottled in new, virgin PET.

With 480 billion plastic bottles sold each year, according to Euromonitor International, it looked as if we had started to find an answer to the problem of plastic pollution, especially since less than 14% of these plastic bottles are recycled. It is therefore not surprising that many brands are making the use of recycled plastic a selling point.

PepsiMax bottles now ostentatiously display that the container is made of 100% r-PET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate). According to the specialist media Rayon Boissons, all of the PepsiCo group's products in France use this material, which generates five times less CO2 emissions than a new PET bottle.

However, British researchers have found that the recycling process could concentrate or introduce new chemicals to the PET value chain. This poses a real problem, since scientists confirm that these chemical substances can migrate from the container to its contents.

Published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, the study even notes that the migration of Bisphenol A -- the famous chemical compound designated as an endocrine disruptor and banned in the manufacture of baby bottles in the EU and US for around a decade can be greater with recycled PET plastic than new plastic.

According to the researchers, the reasons for this could lie in the technologies used when processing the original plastic material and in the "degradation that can happen across a bottle's lifecycle."

"Recycling processes already include the cleaning of the bottles before turning them into secondary raw material for use," says Dr Eleni Iacovidou, a lecturer from Brunel's Centre for Pollution Research and Policy, who led the study.

"By investing in new super-cleaning technologies, we can maximize the likelihood of decontaminating recycled PET to levels similar to virgin PET." The scientist also suggests some ways of reducing the use of PET bottles in households, such as using water filters or much larger water containers.

Note that the European Commission's "Green Deal" calls for the use of 30% recycled materials in plastic packaging by 2030.