What is PET?

PET, the abbreviation for Polyethylen-terephthalat, is fully recycable and may be used for manufacturing new products in many industrial areas such as packaging for detergents, cosmetics, high-quality carpets, foils, car spare parts, pillow fillings for allergic persons and fabrics. Its versatility in the many industries therefore makes it unreplacable.



Being a polymer, polyethylene terephthalate's molecules consist of long chains of repeating units only containing the carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H) organic elements.

PET was first developed for use in synthetic fibres by British Calico Printers in 1941. The patent rights were then sold to DuPont and ICI who in turn sold regional rights to many other companies.(1)

Although originally produced for fibres, PET began to be used for packaging films in the mid 1960s and then, in the early 1970s, the technique for blowing bi-axially oriented bottles was commercially developed.

Bottles now represent the most significant use of PET moulding resins.

Making a PET bottle starts from the raw material: ethylene and paraxylene. These two substances' derivatives (ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid) are made to react to obtain the PET resin. The resin, in the shape of small cylinders called pellets, is melt and injected into a mould to make a preform. The preform, a sort of test tube shorter than what the bottle will be but with thicker walls, is then blow-moulded. During the blow-moulding phase, high-pressure air is blown into the preform allowing it to take the exact shape of the mould it is set into. The final product is a transparent, strong and lightweight bottle.

It is the strength of the material that contibutes to make PET the success it is. Indeed, carbonated soft drinks can generate pressure inside the bottle reaching up to 6 bar. Such high pressure however, thanks to the alignment of macromolecules (cristallisation) occurring both during the resin spinning process and the blow-moulding process, is not capable of deforming the bottle nor can it make the bottle explode.

Throughout the years, the PET industry has increasingly taken on environmental concerns, significantly decreasing the quantity of raw material needed for the manufacture of bottles. Nowadays, a 1.5 liter PET container is manufactured with just 35 grams of raw material!

Another striking feature of PET on the environmental side is that it is fully recyclable. It was in 1977 that the first PET bottle was recycled and was turned into a bottle basecup. Soon however, the fiber industry discovered the "new" material source and started using it for making textiles, carpets and non-woven. Today, even though the "bottle to bottle" recycling process is growing, the fiber market is still the major outlet for recovered PET.

PET containers form part of everyone's daily life: they contain water and soft drinks but many other sorts of liquids as well, such as detergents or soap.

The main reasons lying behind the success of PET containers is that, thanks to the molecular structure of the material set into a web, it is unbreakable. What is more, PET packaging is lightweight, transparent and resealable.

Another advantage of the material lies in its physical properties that allow for great freedom in design.

(1) Neumann, E H. Thermoplastic polyesters in Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology, ed Bakker M. John Wiley, New York 1986