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FSSAI issues guidelines for recycling PET and PET resin for food contact application
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Monday, 21 February, 2022, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwani Maindola, New Delhi
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After issuing the direction allowing recycled plastics to be used as food contact material, the FSSAI has issued guidelines for recycling of post-consumer PET and acceptance criteria for recycled PET resin for food contact application.
The guidelines include provisions only for recycling process of post consumer PET bottles into food grade PET resins that can be used for bottling and other packaging purpose. Food grade recycled PET means resin that has undergone a validated decontamination process to achieve suitable purity for directly holding food or beverage.
These guidelines describe the recycling processes and testing methods, as well. The testing includes validation test for residual concentrations and quantitative analysis for substance present in PET, & for substance migrating from the PET containers into beverage.
The guidelines also stipulate for supply chain documentation that seek declaration of compliance on safety of the recycled food contact material. Also, it asks the FBOs to provide customers with relevant documentation upon request.
Other documents required to be maintained by the FBOs include supply chain communication, supporting documents, registration and authorisation (by the FSSAI), and reference used (of the reputed authorities worldwide like BIS, USFDA, or other standards).
Further, the guidelines prescribe the requirement regarding the operation of ‘super clean mechanical recycling processes.'
According to the FSSAI, the recycling process shall have at least one decontamination step capable of removing contaminants for a level of purity suitable for food contact and it should be validated with ‘challenge test’. The experimental data of the challenge test needs to be reviewed by a recognised competent authority and only recycling process that have been affirmed to the effective shall be regarded as ‘super clean’.
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