Sustainability on Black Trays

Consumers now expect food suppliers to make good environmental choices – not only in terms of food content, but also in terms of packaging. In the North American market there tends to be a perception that black food trays are “bad” for our environment. However, when you look more closely into the process of our black CPET trays, the opposite is true.

Black plastic sometimes creates a challenge in certain regions as traditional sorting systems are unable to separate it from the mixed waste stream. Where the correct infrastructure is in place, black trays can be sorted and used as recycled raw material. Our CPET trays are manufactured mainly from recycled plastic bottles and other tray, then turned into flakes, and cleaned to “close the loop”. Tray to Tray recycling.

There is a perception that white coloured CPET is better for our environment…let’s look into this more closely. In white coloured CPET trays, the plastic used needs to be of virgin material, meaning the plastic can not have been processed beforehand. When you recycle a white CPET tray the only colour it can be used to recreate is black not white. Imagine this – a large bag of multicolour recycled PET. This large bag can only be used for 1 colour – and that is black.

The black CPET you receive from CiMa-Pak contains 50-70% post-consumer recycled PET. Black is an excellent color batch as it does not matter which colour the flakes were derived from.