In August 2021, Starlinger & Co GmbH received two letters of no objection (LNO) from the US Food and Drug Administration FDA regarding its newly developed machine concept for processing post-consumer HDPE waste. LNO is suitable for HDPE bottle-to-bottle and bottle-cap-to-cap recycling processes, and confirmed that the HDPE regranulation produced by the Starlinger recycling process can be used up to 100% in food-contact packaging. As early as 2012, Starlinger received the first FDA LNO using recycled HDPE.

"These two LNOs are another important achievement of Starlinger in the field of food-grade recycling," said Paul Niedl, Starlinger's commercial director of recycling technology. "Just like in the case of PET, 100% recycled HDPE can now be used in direct food contact applications. There is a lot of interest in the market-all signs point to a circular economy."

The new Starlinger machine concept includes the recoSTAR dynamic recovery line with C-VAC degassing module and downstream odor reduction technology. The removal of odors plays an important role in the production of food-grade recycled materials made from post-consumer HDPE. "Packaging made of HDPE is used in many foods," Niedl explained. „For example, if substances in food residues migrate into plastics, they will produce unpleasant odors during the recycling process. To avoid this, we adopted a three-step process: start with material preparation and then in the C-VAC module Highly efficient degassing in the process, and finally thermal post-treatment of the produced regranulation. This method ensures the removal of even deep-rooted odors." In contrast to the method of suppressing odors by additives and enclosing them in regranulation, the Starlinger process Remove odor-causing substances and provide permanent odor reduction particles that will not release unwanted odors in subsequent production steps.

"With the development of the circular economy, HDPE bottle-to-bottle recycling will become more and more important," Paul Niedl emphasized. “A large part of food packaging such as milk and juice bottles, bottle caps, and meat food trays are made of HDPE. If this packaging is returned to the recycling stream and reused as food packaging without degrading recycling, it will be possible in the future. Save millions of tons of original HDPE."

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