Yogurt Rolls Out in Mechanically Recycled Polystyrene

Plastics circularity has taken a step forward with the launch of the first yogurt cup made from mechanically recycled polystyrene (PS). The yogurt, marketed under the Milbona brand, will roll out at Lidl supermarkets in Europe early 2025.

Styrenics supplier Ineos Styrolution partnered with Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller, a leading German dairy-products processor, on the project.

The companies conducted a pilot test in Spring 2024 to see how consumers would react to the recycled plastic and the cup color. They manufactured and filled several hundred recycled PS cups, for evaluation by volunteers at an Ineos cafeteria.

The results revealed that 90% of the volunteers would buy yogurt in a recycled PS cup. Testers also indicated that a tinted recycled PS yogurt cup would be as acceptable as standard white.

To make the recycled PS used to thermoform the cups, Ineos uses a mechanical recycling process that starts with deep near infrared (NIR) sorting.

PS recycling achieves 99.9% purity.

NIR is used to separate rigid PS from foam PS. The rigid PS, from used PS yogurt cups, is ground into flakes and then hot washed. The flakes are rinsed, dried, sorted, and then “super cleaned.”

In this last step, the flakes are melted at a high temperature and then exposed to vacuum technology to remove any lingering impurities. The final pelletized recyclate is 99.9% pure and safe for food contact. Previously, only PET bottle recyclates had achieved this level of circularity.

Ineos Styrolution’s super-clean process is registered as a novel technology under European Union (EU) regulation 2022/1616 on recycled plastics intended for food contact.

The recycled PS exhibits the same physical properties as virgin PS and behaves the same during extrusion and thermoforming — but has a much smaller environmental footprint than virgin polymer.

Thus, the recycled PS will help food companies meet the requirements of the EU’s new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which the European Council adopted earlier this month.

The yogurt cup collaboration represents “a milestone achievement on our common way to perfect circularity for polystyrene cups and towards fulfilment of the PPWR requirements, as well as our own CO2 footprint reduction targets,” said Lena Lembach, senior specialist, packaging development, Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller, in a prepared statement.

Read more about Ineos Styrolution at PlasticsToday.