The crates stream of our Project takes another step towards the circular economy following the successful completion after reusing cycles: the polypropylene crates have been recycled by GCR Sustainable Plastic Solutions, transforming them into new recycled raw material, 100% r-PP, in order to produce a new generation of crates by Paléc Ecológico that will be reintroduced into the market inside the project’s closed loop in the demo-pilot, through a wholesaler in Mercavalencia member of Amafruva. This has been carried out under the coordination of the SINTAC Recycling team.
However, this new cycle features a striking visual change.
The crates used during the first cycle were blue. To immediately identify the crates manufactured in this second cycle, a red colourant has been added to the new recycled flakes, producing a chocolate-brown pellet.
This will make it possible to easily distinguish between the two cycles and monitor their performance more accurately during reusability, recyclability and functionality tests.
This breakthrough demonstrates that reused crates can be recycled to produce new crates, reducing the consumption of virgin plastic and enabling a genuine and sustainable circular economy model for the agri-food sector.
The final testing (reusability and migration-food contact) will showcase the behaviour of the crates in each life cycle: the first cycle using blue v-PP and the second cycle using chocolate-brown r-PP.
