The European Commission granted a financial contribution for research under the Seventh Framework Programme to develop processes and quality procedures for the valorisation of recycled plastics for food contact applications. The three-year project, started on November 2011 and called SupercleanQ, consists of a twelve-strong consortium that has secured 1,916,300 euro of EU funding to develop quality assurance tools and procedures for plastics recycling processes targeted at food contact applications. The tools will be applied to a new process for the recycling of coloured and layered PET into food contact applications that cannot be processed by current PET recycling facilities.

• a post-market challenge test for validation of recycled food contact materials with 100% reliability
• a post-process validation quality protocol for assuring the efficacy of plastics recycling processes for food contact applications with 100% reliability
• development of a process to recycle the 700,000 ton per year of currently unrecyclable coloured and layered PET that cannot be processed by existing PET recycling facilities for food contact packaging
• in-line monitoring for process quality control to identify contaminants from oxodegradable additives, biodegradable plastics, bis-phenol A and non-food contact compliant levels of chemical contamination.