Indorama Ventures has announced a Zero Waste to Landfill initiative at its PETValue Philippines recycling site, aimed at improving resource efficiency and reducing waste within its IndoNova business. IndoNova recycles post-consumer PET bottles into food-grade recycled PET. PETValue Philippines, a joint venture with Coca-Cola Europacific Aboitiz Philippines, has partnered with Republic Cement to launch the initiative. The facility, located in Cavite, is described as the country’s first bottle-to-bottle, food-grade PET recycling site, processing used PET bottles into new food-grade packaging. As part of the programme, caps and labels that cannot be recycled during the PET recycling process are recovered by Republic Cement’s resource recovery business ecoloop and co-processed as an alternative fuel in cement production.
Non-recyclable fractions used in cement production
The initiative focuses on materials generated during the recycling process that are not suitable for recycling into new PET packaging. These fractions, including caps and labels, are diverted from landfill and used by Republic Cement through its ecoloop resource recovery operation. Co-processing in cement manufacturing enables these materials to be used as an alternative fuel, supporting the objective of reducing landfill disposal at the recycling site.
Indorama Ventures stated that since entering the recycling business in 2011, it has recycled nearly 180 billion post-consumer PET bottles. The company currently recycles more than 700 PET bottles every second.
"At IndoNova, we believe circularity doesn’t end when a bottle becomes a bottle again," said Pankaj Sinha, business head of recycling at IndoNova. "We are continuously looking for new ways to recover value from every possible material throughout the recycling process. This partnership shows how innovation and collaboration can help eliminate waste, improve resource efficiency, and bring us closer to a truly circular economy."
Other PET recycling developments
In similar developments, DePoly has established a showcase plant in Monthey, Switzerland, for its recycling technology. The process is described as breaking down PET waste into its original chemical components and recreating virgin-quality raw materials with no loss of performance, suitable for all PET applications. The plant is expected to have a nominal capacity of around 500 tonnes of feedstock input per year and will allow the company to demonstrate its technology at industrial scale.
Steinert has also been developing an AI-based sorting programme for separating post-consumer PET food trays from other PET packaging. The company is a finalist in this year’s Sustainability Awards, nominated in the Driving the Circular Economy category.
