A little bit of background on Repeat

David Turney - Sunday, October 18, 2009

We recently launched our new Repeat seat protector, which is made from recycled PET bottles.

Here's the story behind Repeat. It's a longer post, but a really interesting one and worth the read. To check out the Repeat seat protector, click here.

Polyethylene terephthalate - commonly abbreviated to PET - is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family most commonly associated with food and drink containers.

Interestingly, though, it was initially developed as a material from which cloth (polyester, dacron and terylene) was produced and most of the world’s PET production still is for synthetic fibres (more than 60 per cent: think polar fleece, carpeting, sails and space blankets as well as for various industrial uses) with bottle production accounting for around 30 per cent of global demand.

PET was patented in 1941 by British chemists John Whinfield and James Dickson of the Calico Printers' Association of Manchester and the PET bottle was patented in 1973.

While most thermoplastics can, in principle, be recycled, PET bottle recycling is more practical than many other plastic applications. The primary reason is that plastic carbonated soft drink bottles and water bottles are almost exclusively PET, which makes them more easily identifiable in a recycle stream.

Recycling PET bottles saves 84 per cent of the energy it takes to make new bottles from raw PET, however according to a spokesman for a Sydney recycling centre, less than 10 per cent of PET bottles produced are actually recycled.

Given one PET bottle equals one PET bottle, theoretically, if every bottle was recycled, there would be no need to create new PET. That being said, the reality is the discrepancy between bottles produced and bottles returned.

The other issue is one of clarity. Over time, with multiple processing, the transparency is affected: in other words, the recycled bottles aren’t as clear. That can be an issue for food and beverage presentation in particular. Also, if a manufacturer wants a coloured bottle, they need a percentage of virgin material to keep the colour true.

Although PET production is an important segment of polymer production, it should not be confused with polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP), which are both produced more throughout the world. PE is widely used, especially in the production of the plastic shopping bag while the fatigue-resistant and recyclable PP has a variety of uses including packaging, textiles, stationary, plastic parts, lab equipment and parts for automobiles.

Aside from Repeat^tm, Smart Automotive also uses non-woven polypropylene (NWPP) for its products. It is actually called non-woven polypropylene because the cross-hatched ‘pattern’ on the material is stamped on to make it look woven.

While the term ‘environmentally friendly’ implies that PET and polypropylene leaves no ecological footprint, that’s not entirely true. Obviously they are manufactured using fossil fuels and so contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. However, they contribute to waste reduction (because they’re recyclable) and the movement away from one-use products, which means the ecological impact is smaller than that of similar alternatives.

Check out our Repeat seat protector and make an enquiry today.

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