Back to black: Unilever pioneers circular solution for undetectable black plastic bottles

Unilever has developed a new detectable black pigment for its High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) bottles that enables them to be sorted by plant scanners and recycled. The consumer goods giant claims that this will enable 2,500 tons of plastic bottles to be sorted and sent for recycling each year. The solution comes as part of Unilever UK & Ireland’s new “Get Plastic Wise Campaign”.

The new detectable bottles will be phased in during 2019 and will allow Unilever to further “close the loop” by including the recycled black plastic back in new packaging. Currently, “standard” black plastic bottles go undetected by the automatic optical sorting machines in recycling plants because they use near infra-red (NIR) light, which is absorbed by the “carbon black” pigment traditionally used to color them. This effectively makes them invisible to the sorter and leads to them being rejected and sent to landfill.

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