Safety assessment of the process Carton Pack based on Starlinger deCON technology used to recycle post‐consumer PET into food contact materials

摘要

The Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids ( ) assessed the safety of the recycling process Carton Pack ( register number 188), which uses the Starlinger de technology. The input material is hot washed and dried poly(ethylene terephthalate) ( ) flakes originating from collected post‐consumer containers, e.g. bottles, including no more than 5% from non‐food consumer applications. The flakes are preheated before being submitted to solid‐state polycondensation ( ) in a continuous reactor at high temperature under vacuum and gas flow. Having examined the challenge test provided, the Panel concluded that the preheating (step 2) and the decontamination in the continuous reactor (step 3) are critical in determining the decontamination efficiency of the process. The operating parameters to control the performance of these critical steps are temperature, pressure, residence time and gas flow rate. It was demonstrated that this recycling process is able to ensure a level of migration of potential unknown contaminants into food below the conservatively modelled migration of 0.1 μg/kg food. Therefore, the Panel concluded that the recycled obtained from this process is not considered to be of safety concern, when used at up to 100% for the manufacture of materials and articles for contact with all types of foodstuffs for long‐term storage at room temperature, with or without hot‐fill. Trays made of this recycled are not intended to be used in microwave and conventional ovens and such uses are not covered by this evaluation.