Disposable PET bottles and PET bottle crates are collected and partly recycled and partly "thermally reused", i.e. used as fuel in waste incineration plants or combined heat and power plants.

In processing plants, Mercodor shredders can be used to chop PET into small "flakes" before they are cleaned of foreign matter, sorted by colour and processed into pellets.

Used PET can also be used to produce polyester textile fibres. The world market leader in this field is China. In 2006 alone, almost 4 million tonnes of PET waste were exported to China, which corresponds to around 100 billion plastic bottles. Turkey also imports used PET to produce textile fibres.