Everything you Need to Know About The World's Most Useful Plastic -- PET

PET plastics include polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT). And PET is a milky white or light yellow, highly crystalline polymer with a smooth, shiny surface. It is best known as the clear plastic used for water and soda bottle containers. As a raw material, PET is a petroleum-based product that is globally recognized as a safe, lightweight, and flexible material that is also 100% recyclable. In fact, PET is the most widely recycled plastic in the world – and the recycling rates are continuing to increase! If you’re not sure which plastic materials are made from PET, all you have to do is to take a look at the identification code at the bottom of the container. If it’s made of PET, it will have a symbol featuring the number “1”, surrounded by the three chasing arrows that indicates recyclability.

Product Range

At present, the product range of PET has also expanded from the original polyester staple fiber to the current series of polyester staple fiber, polyester filament, polyester bottle, polyester film, engineering plastics and composite multifunctional products in thousands of specifications. What’s more,recycled post-consumer PET plastic has been used in many ways because it is the easiest plastic to recycle.

PET has been widely used in many fields for its excellent properties, such as electronics, engineering, medicals and so on. PET has good optical properties and weather resistance, and amorphous PET has good optical transparency. PET plastic can be made into films, recordings, video, film, optical discs, substrates, insulating films, product packaging, etc.

As a plastic, it can also be made into various bottles, such as a PET bottle, and can be used as electrical components, bearings, gears, etc.

Material characteristics

In addition, PET has excellent abrasion resistance, dimensional stability and electrical insulation. PET bags ,like PET office laptop bags, have been widely used because of their high strength, non-toxicity, penetration resistance, light weight and high production efficiency.

Safety Issue about PET

Many people concern that PET plastic may be harmful to their health and claim that we should reduce the use of it. There are also scientific evidences proved that PET itself is not toxic, but due to environmental changes, such as long-term ultraviolet radiation or high temperature, resulting in a large loss of product molecules, it is likely to release toxic substances, which in turn affects our health. A review in the April 2010 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives pointed out that polyethylene terephthalate (PET) may produce endocrine disruptors under frequent or multiple use conditions. And it is recommended to conduct an in-depth study. Therefore, in case, when using PET products, we need to be care about the storage of products.

Since the 1980s, PET has made breakthroughs in engineering plastics. At present, PET and PBT together as thermoplastic polyester have become one of the five engineering plastics.