Additive makes PET oxo-biodegrade in five to fifteen years

Canadian-based Planet Green Bottle Corporation (PGBC), recently introduced Reverte, a non-vegetable-based additive which when added to the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) resin used in the manufacture of PET plastic bottles creates an end-product, plastic bottle which will oxo-biodegrade in five to 15 years. This in contrast to the approximate 1,000 year lifespan of a standard PET plastic bottle. The PGBC oxo-biodegradable PET plastic bottle can still be thrown into a municipal recycling “blue box” because it is compatible with all current recycling streams for PET plastic bottles. According to PGBC, with the recycling rate of PET plastic bottles in North America at only about 23.5 percent, interest recently has turned to so-called “end of life” solutions as an alternative. Oxo-biodegradability, says the company, is therefore an “insurance policy” against buying a PET plastic bottle and finding that your discarded bottle is one of the three out of four PET plastic bottles that goes to landfill or is littered. Reverte incorporates a two part control package which differentiates it from comparable products. First, the Reverte additive control package is photo-initiated, which means that the oxo-breakdown doesn’t significantly begin before the product is discarded and exposed to UV light and/or heat such as sunlight. Secondly, Reverte has secondary phase biodegradation promoters which assist the growth of microbial colonies. This speeds up and facilitates the ultimate biodegradation of plastic following the initial oxo-breakdown. “There are approximately 200 billion PET plastic bottles used per year globally,” says Nick Havercroft, chairman of Planet Green. “If 75 percent do not get into the recycling stream, that means 150 billion PET plastic bottles annually are discarded somewhere in our ecosystem.” Patrick Rooney, director of corporate development at PGBC states that; “Unfortunately, the un-informed have equated biodegradability with corn and/or vegetable-based ‘plastic’ bottles. These PLA-based bottles and additives are not friendly to PET plastic recycling streams, therefore oxo-biodegradability gets tarred with the brush of contamination of recycled PET plastic bottles. PLA-based bottles must be collected separately for inclusion in a program of commercial composting. Planet Green’s additive is designed to be compatible with PET plastic, making it totally recycling and ‘blue box’ friendly.”