What is carbon black?
Carbon black is a pigment that is used a lot in a wide variety of materials to obtain dark and opaque colours (black and some dark colours). It is highly cost competitive, since it provides excellent opacity with a low concentration percentage.
Why does packaging containing carbon black create problems in sorting plants?
Several brands use black packaging to highlight their products, particularly in the ready meals sector. In anticipation of the extension of sorting guidelines throughout France, sorting centres have equipped themselves with automated optical separators based on infrared detection, also called NIR (Near Infra Red), to sort the various types of plastic packaging according to the material used (PP, APET, PS, etc.). However, the presence of carbon black prevents the detection of packaging, since it absorbs infrared light emitted by the device. The packaging in question is therefore refused and directed towards the sorting centres’ waste and is not recycled. To make it easier to sort black or dark packaging, we help our customers to choose alternatives to carbon black to make their packaging detectable and recyclable.
What other solutions are there to dark packaging?
- The first alternative, when the colour black or a dark colour is not necessary, is to suggest that our customer shifts to transparent packaging. However, this switch is not always possible for a variety of reasons.
- The second alternative, when the colour black or dark colour is not necessary, is to use other pigments instead of carbon black.
As part of the AGEC Law (Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy), a number of stakeholders have spontaneously made commitments to envisaging the use of thermoformable films without carbon black. With this in mind, Plastobreiz & Plastoloir also undertook to do this in 2018. Our dark carbon black-free packaging was tested by two optical sorting manufacturers and then successfully subjected to the testing protocol setup by the COTREP (Technical committee for the recycling of plastic packaging). Dark carbon black-free packaging produced by Plastobreiz & Plastoloir is therefore fully detectable by optical sorting devices and can therefore be recycled.
Any questions on carbon black-free packaging?
