Petcore Europe, PlasticsEurope, Plastics Recyclers Europe, and VinylPlus have mutually agreed to join forces to form the organisation PolyREC. PolyREC will monitor, verify, and report their plastics recycling and uptake data in Europe. This will be achieved by using a common data collection system - RecoTrace. PolyREC will ensure traceability, transparency, and trust in recycled materials along the entire plastics value chain.

PolyREC will use VinylPlus’ 20 years’ experience and expertise that it has in becoming the industry standard for collecting credible and reliable recycling data via its data collection vehicle Recovinyl. VinylPlus’ Managing Director Brigitte Dero says “circularity of plastics is a key opportunity to enhance plastics products sustainability. The European PVC industry, through VinylPlus, has learnt the importance of monitoring and progress reporting. We are therefore pleased to share this long-time experience and work collaboratively with all plastic industry sectors to raise traceability and transparency in recycled plastics along the entire plastics value chain”.

PolyREC comes at a time where monitoring polymers circularity is paramount, especially inthe context of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA). This system will be able to fulfil the CPA objectives, legislative traceability demands, and industry wide plastic recycling pledges. PRE’s President, Ton Emans, elaborated by saying that “setting up mechanisms that evidence progress in driving plastic circularity in a transparent manner is a must if we are to meet the EU targets”.

Emans continued that “today’s announcement by the plastics value chain covering recyclers, raw material producers, and converters is a significant step towards a credible and systemic approach to genuinely improve plastic production, collection, and recycling. This mutual approach to data collection is indispensable to measure the industry’s advancement while using the same yardstick”.

Petcore Europe’s Managing Director Christian Crépet announced that as “Petcore Europe has been pioneering the monitoring of PET recycling in Europe since the 1990’s, its participation into a joint monitoring recycled plastics scheme for the EU is both timely and logical”.

“We are very pleased to join forces with key plastic value chain partners in setting up this unique cross-polymer monitoring system while benefiting from the longstanding and proven Recovinyl system. Capitalising on our solid experience in providing key figures of the European plastic industry, we see this as a key milestone in our journey towards circular plastics”, added Virginia Janssens, PlasticsEurope Managing Director.