Javiera Andrea Sepúlveda Carter

Plastic recycling plays an essential role in the transition from a linear Economy to a Circular Economy model. With almost 26 million tons of plastics generated yearly in Europe, the European Commission, in accordance with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has determined that by 2030 all packaging on the EU market needs to ensure being recyclable or reusable in an economically viable way, furthermore all packaging plastics will have to be made at least in a 30% of recycled plastics. Being food packaging a fundamental plastic use, different widely used polymers such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and Polystyrene (PS) have residues reaching recycling plants strictly being used for non-food applications due to the inexistence of decontamination methods approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that allows its safe use on packaging food application.

The main aims of this doctoral thesis will focus on the research of decontamination technologies of industrially mechanically recycled non-PET plastics to permit its safe use in food packaging applications, considering additives that might appear in unknown contents through the process and could potentially migrate to the foodstuff. Searching for new approaches to reduce migration issues, novel functional barriers or the development of composites will also be a case of study, intending to maintain the overall performance of the materials determined by conducting continuous characterization. The project seeks to contribute to this challenge, with the support of the wide experience and complementary teams of UPM and Ecoembes, a primordial actor in the recycling chain in Spain.