So, what exactly is PolyAl?
A beverage carton is a multilayer laminate engineered to keep liquid food safe without refrigeration: roughly 70% paperboard for stiffness, around 25% polymers to make it liquid-tight and sealable, and about 5% aluminium foil — only a few microns thick — to block light and oxygen.
When a carton is recycled, a paper mill pulps it and recovers the valuable cellulose fibre to make new paper and board. What's left over — the polyethylene plus the ultra-thin aluminium barrier, together with the polypropylene from caps and closures — is the PolyAl fraction.
Instead of being discarded, PolyAl is cleaned, processed and turned into recycled plastic pellets (granules) that manufacturers can run on standard PE/PP lines. In other words: the part of the carton that used to be treated as a leftover is now a 100% post-consumer recycled feedstock.
The global picture — how much gets recycled?
Beverage-carton recycling has scaled fast, but the job is far from finished. Published industry figures for 2024 paint the picture:
- ~28% — the global collection-for-recycling rate for beverage cartons, up from 25% two years earlier.
- Over 1.3 million tonnes of used cartons collected and sent for recycling in a single year.
- 200+ recycling operations worldwide now process cartons — and a growing share of them are dedicated specifically to PolyAl.
Recycling rates vary enormously by region
Parts of Europe already recover half or more of their cartons, supported by mature light-packaging collection, optical sorting into a dedicated liquid packaging board bale grade, and mills equipped for laminates.
Meanwhile many markets in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa are only now building their first dedicated carton-recycling lines. The direction of travel, though, is the same everywhere — up.
The capacity gap — why PolyAl matters right now
Here's the part the industry doesn't say loudly enough: collecting cartons is only half the battle. The fibre side is largely solved — paper mills everywhere can pulp cartons. The bottleneck is the PolyAl.
In Europe alone, operational PolyAl recycling capacity sits at roughly 50,000 tonnes a year, while the capacity actually needed to recycle all the cartons on the market is estimated at 150,000–250,000 tonnes a year. To close that gap, the sector has already invested around €200 million, with a further €100 million pledged by 2027 — roughly two-thirds of it earmarked for PolyAl specifically.
That gap is exactly why PolyAl is such a compelling material today: demand for a recycled, traceable, ready-to-use polyolefin feedstock is running ahead of supply.
What does PolyAl actually become?
This is where it gets tangible. Recycled PolyAl is already being turned into durable, everyday products all over the world:
- Logistics & storage: reusable transport pallets, crates and containers.
- Construction: composite boards, roofing sheets and tiles for non-structural building products.
- Outdoor & urban: benches, planters, decking, fencing and street furniture.
- Consumer goods: bins, buckets, trays, tubs, caps and closures.
- Advanced uses: 3D-printing filament and recycled components in car interiors.
Why it's good for the planet (and for manufacturers)
It keeps material in the loop: every tonne of PolyAl turned into pellets is a tonne of plastic and aluminium diverted from landfill or incineration. And it cuts carbon, because recycled polyolefins carry a far lower CO₂ footprint than virgin plastic.
It is also a blend-in material: PolyAl pellets run on existing PE/PP processing lines, with no new machinery required. Quality PolyAl is fully traceable and produced following the PolyAl-specific standard UNE 53925:2026, giving manufacturers the documentation their own customers and ESG teams increasingly demand.
Where GetPolyal fits in
GetPolyal supplies 100% post-consumer recycled PolyAl pellets of EU origin, produced following UNE 53925:2026, compatible as a blend-in feedstock or functional additive for PE/PP injection and extrusion lines.
As the world races to close the PolyAl capacity gap, our mission is simple: make a consistent, traceable, ready-to-use recycled material available to manufacturers who want to build durable products from it — and cut their footprint at the same time.
PolyAl recycling in numbers
| Carton composition | ~70% paperboard · ~25% polymers · ~5% aluminium |
|---|---|
| Global carton recycling rate (2024) | ~28% (up from 25%) |
| Cartons collected for recycling | over 1.3 million tonnes / year |
| Recycling operations worldwide | 200+ |
| EU PolyAl capacity today | ~50,000 t / year |
| EU PolyAl capacity needed | 150,000–250,000 t / year |
| Investment | ~€200M invested · ~€100M more by 2027 |
| Standard | UNE 53925:2026 |